Okay, so, I know what you’re thinking. You may be wondering why I am writing about health and that’s okay. I feel one benefit of this substack is to also throw in some personal touches— in the mix, to help you learn more about me, but to also show the relation between everyday life and design.
Trust me, I have thought a lot about this and realized the connection is a lot deeper than we know.
Van Walter
Van Walter, or Van, as we call him, our youngest child, recently hit an age where he became the only Bowman kid that didn’t do a sport. Mia, our oldest child, was in crew, and Rome Henry, our middle child was also in crew. These are very competitive and very intense activities for my kids. They kept us very busy too. After a while, we realized that Van was lacking in the sport department.
It was a bit sad too, to realize, that we sort of forgot about our youngest kid. If you’re a parent, though, you will completely understand.
Mia was launching out of the house, into adulthood, Rome was moving up to Varsity level in Crew and doing amazing in Mathletes; and we were so distracted that we completely dropped the ball on Van. Like crew, I thought Van might be interested in a sport I played in college or had some knowledge of.
When I approached him about crew, he mentioned that he didn’t want to do it, because, his older brother was in crew. I supposed the cooties might get him, or perhaps he wanted to branch out on his own and feel a bit more independent. That logic seemed very sound to me; So, I considered a different sport, I played and knew a lot about — water polo!
My History with Water Polo
Have you ever fought till the bitter end to preserve your very own life? I hope not, if the answer is yes, you will certainly have a connection with my first encounter with Water Polo. ☠️
I was a newly minted diver, straight out of Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center (NDSTC), and I was reporting to my first assignment and as soon as I checked into the quarterdeck, I was told, “… no one is here, to check you in.”
Where is everyone? I thought.
“You’ll have to go to PT. It’s mandatory, meet everyone at the SPECWAR Pool for water polo.” Before I could ask when it started, the guy standing watch said, “It starts at 7:30. You’re going to have to hurry.”
This sounded cool, the only problem was, I was in my dress whites and changing out would take at least a good 10 minutes. Considering it was 7:15 and I had no clue where the pool was, I took a guess, grabbed my swim shorts, out of my car, and booked it to the only pool I knew of on base.
After arriving at the pool, I knew I was in the right spot. I recognized some of my Dive School buddies and made my way towards the locker room to change out.
The smell of sweat mixed with chlorine and the humidity of a Virginia autumn, hits you like a ton of bricks when you walk into this place.
I soon realized this was going to suck, because someone saw me walking into the locker and yelled out, “oh, we got’a new guy…”. Followed by a cacophony of heckles in agreement of what was about to go down. It felt like I was in for a ceremonial beatdown. One you’d expect from a fraternity.
My heart was still racing from the run over. I looked down at my shoes and realized they weren’t going to pass an inspection and walked into a modern day aquatic gladiator match.
Speedos everywhere, water splashing everywhere, I was greeted by a nice guy named Mr. Snow, who was wearing a conspicuous flowered swim cap, who mentioned — in between the riotous mix of screaming and loud talking — I was, “…on his team.”
What the hell did I just agree to?
It was too late, to back out now, at this point. I was committed.
Read part two here.