A Funny Thing about Confidence

THE PAST…Do you remember those Speedo bathing suits that were red, white and Blue with the white stars on them? That was the official swimsuit of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club Swim Team when I was thirteen. The Grosse Pointe Yacht Club social scene was defined more by swimming than boating. The club was becoming a powerhouse within the region.

I distinctly remember standing in the pool gutter in my red, blue and white starred Speedo bathing suit, watching my brother in the starting blocks. Each swimmer had a look of fierce determination on their face. They took deep forced breathes, exhaling loudly, gathering their breath and intensity. You couldn’t see in their eyes, behind their colored goggles, but you knew that they wanted to win; to beat the person next to them. They’ve been doing two a day practices, the first starting at 6:00am for years. They stood hunched over gazed to the far end of the pool, hands forcibly shaking to loosen the muscles in their arms, and it was as serious to them as it was to their parents standing in coat and tie by the poolside bar knowing their social status might credit or debit based on their son’s performance.

I never understood that. You know that desire to win. All these people actually cared about doing well. For different reasons, it matter to them. I remember thinking "why can’t I summon that feeling inside?"

Of course, I had never swum a competitive race in my life. I was purely exhibition. The coach was obligated to swim every kid so every once in a while, they would run an event for the exhibition swimmers. We would come in waves. We would swim against each other for exhibition ribbons. We stood on the blocks too. But it was the fear of humiliation which filled our gaze. The outcome was irrelevant. The fact that we stood there in the first place defined the moment. We swam fast to get done and out of the pool and out of sight as quick as possible.

I can honestly say that I had no sense of competitiveness through the entirety of my teenage years. I had no idea what it felt like. I could not fathom how it would make someone want to get out of bed at 5 O’clock in the morning on a school day to practice on a freezing morning in an outdoor pool, watching the lines in the bottom go by lap after lap. Why did any of this matter at all?