CALL ME SNAKE

CALL ME SNAKE’S resident curmudgeon has another gripe: pool joggers. In case you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to people who go in the pool wearing some weird flotation belt that keeps them upright so that they can “run” in water rather than swim. The problem is that these people tend to do their thing during lap swim hours and move about one-tenth the speed of swimmers. The whole thing drives me crazy and I’ve never gotten the point of it. What’s wrong with swimming, which is the natural thing to do in the water? Why must people insist on running, when they barely move at all. And if they are going to persist with this activity, why can’t they be honest and call it pool crawling rather than running or jogging?

Pool jogging used to be even more popular 10 or more years ago and then it disappeared. Now a couple of partisans are showing up in my YMCA pool and I’m worried that the trend is catching on again.