Dotty Parker

I don't swim

I decided today that one of the things I'm going to do when I'm feeling overwhelmed or anxious is to think of the bizarre stuff that my brother BellyRub and I have done together or laugh about together for no particular reason.

I have looked in vain for a picture of a particular skit from Saturday Night Live. There are two men who want to go to the Olympics to be synchronized swimmers. One of the doesn't know how to swim so he wears an orange lifejacket.

That's Martin Short, so you can imagine that he's dwarfed by the life jacket. What's really great (for me, anyway) is that during the fake interview, Martin Short says, in a small, kind of stupid, but succinct way, "I don't swim."

That's it. There is nothing else to say, really. Except when it comes to BellyRub and me. There are times that feel appropriate to us, unexplainable times, but still, when we say to each other, "I don't swim."

Then we cackle like magpies and when we can stop snorting long enough to breathe, one of us says, "I don't swim."

The phenomenon usually occurs after someone has said something very serious to them, but completely meaningless to us. Here are some examples:

I could never have a sock monkey. Sock monkeys frighten me.
--I don't swim.

Hey, if your friends all jumped off a bridge you wouldn't, would you? You know it's dangerous. You could get hurt.
--I don't swim.

No, deep water bothers me. I don't like swimming in the ocean.
--I don't swim.

It is one more piece of insanity that I am sharing with you. And you're lucky to get it.

But this all came up for me when I was filling out this online survey. (Why was I doing the survey? Because even though I'm in a desireable age category, most of the survey goes away because I don't fit the mold. Shocking! In some respects, I don't swim.)

Posted by dotty at November 12, 2003 06:15 PM