So the "real" swimmers, wore gym shorts out of the locker room and mastered the art of going from on deck in gym shorts to in the pool in a speedo in one fluid motion. Impressive really.
Fast forward to the present and jammers exist so the guys don't have to do magic tricks to spare themselves the indignity of strutting (or me the horror of observing them strut, because face it, I'm not in high school anymore but some things are still awkward) around the pool in speedos (this is a particular blessing to me when the old dudes who shouldn't be strutting in anything less than a snuggie decide to go for a swim).
Anyway, recently there have been two "real" swimmers at my pool. To be clear, I'm not a "real" swimmer, but I've spent enough time with them to know one when I see one: they do all four strokes, they flip turn and have amazingly streamlined push offs, they pay attention to the pace clock and for some odd reason the girls like to pull their bathing suit straps off their shoulders whenever they can (I respect and admire the real swimmers and all, but honey, you're shoulders aren't so big that they can't be contained by your swimsuit's lycra straps). On Monday, the girl real swimmer was there but initially her usual male counterpart was not. She was finishing her workout as a youngish non-descript guy came into the pool - he was wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt so whether he was her real swimmer friend was unclear.
He put on a cap and jumped in the pool in his gym shorts.
It appeared, from the gym shorts, that he was not a real swimmer and I wanted to tell him that the cap could not possibly cut down on enough drag to make up for the baggie gym shorts. And then, he took them off to reveal ... a speedo. Which definitely, without a doubt, made him a real swimmer who was rusty on the old out of the shorts into the pool maneuver and who somehow hadn't learned of jammers (or maybe he had, and realized that even with a few extra inches of leg, jammers don't leave enough to the imagination).
