The Swimmers of Lake Martin

Lake Martin shimmers beneath a heavy midday sun. I am sitting on a dock.

There are distant sounds of splashing. Kids laughing. All the children are swimming. All their respective adults are sitting ashore, dry. As adults often are.

There is nothing like July on the lake.

A boater comes speeding by, towing several middle-aged men on a water tube. The tube men are all yelling gaily, shouting two of the seven major American swear words.

The whole lake can hear these men. But nobody is offended by their language. We instead move in for a better look. Namely, because these men are well into their upper sixties, and yet here they are, traveling upwards of 187 mph behind the nautical thrust of approximately 350 horses.

Soon, everyone is watching these men. Then, the boat driver, who looks like a 12-year-old girl, throws the wheel and makes a donut in the water. The tube is whipped like a slingshot. The group of grandfathers lose their collective grip and become instantly airborne, sailing into the great expanse of space-time, screaming barnyard expletives as they make their Wile E. Coyote-like journey into the lake, accompanied by splashes shaped like mushroom clouds from a nuclear field test.

I am drinking iced tea, taking it all in. The lake is teeming with youthful joy.

Nearby, I can hear kids playing Marco Polo. I hear them, giggling. Those poor kids. Marco Polo is pox on humanity.

I was a chubby boy. A redhead. A hopeless athlete devoid of coordination. Marco Polo was not my game. I hate Marco Polo. I once got caught in a game of Marco Polo that lasted over six years. This is why it has been my longstanding policy to cheat at Marco Polo. Life is too short.

Along with noises of childhood glee, surrounding me is all the conflicting noise of various radios reverberating across the water.

The Radio Wars begin innocently each year on the lake, but rapidly turn into vicious battles. Everything is fine when the lake is silent. But once one young person fires up the first radio, it’s game on.

According to the cherished Radio Wars tradition, the first radio’s opening volley must be a song you would never listen to, not even if you were threatened by foreign intelligence agents by punishment of waterboarding.

This opening song is usually a song like “Horse With No Name,” or worse, “We Built This City…” by Starship, which once held the prestigious position as America's most-hated song until a guy named Billy Ray Cyrus came along.

Next, everyone races to their radios to return fire. Modern pop-country is soon invoked, with its tired lyrics about beer, trucks, and girls in jeans. Where have the days of classic country’s lyrical cleverness gone? I ask: Where are the Conway Twittys and Loretta Lynns of our generation, singing timeless anthems of fettered love such as, “You’re the Reason Our Kids are Ugly”?

After the first few radios begin, it is all-out music war. Young persons’ stereos run full blast. You hear a little of everything on the lake. Megadeath, AC/DC, Van Halen, KISS, the Sex Pistols, Alice Cooper, Pat Boone, etc.

But somehow, it all adds to the joy. Somehow all the distant radios give you the impression that life is happening. All around you. All the time. And all you have to do to enjoy this life is refrain from judging it.

I see the middle-aged guys crawling out of the water. They’re climbing onto the pontoon, laughing wildly. You can tell it’s been a long time since they’ve done anything so wonderfully insane as tubing.

And I’m wondering, why do so few adults swim? Did you know that a recent study showed that only 44 percent of earth’s adults can even swim at all?

This is mostly, researchers say, because an adult’s swimming abilities fade with age if not used. Swimming is NOT like riding a bike. Simply put: If grown-ups don’t maintain swimming skills, they forget altogether. The childhood skill of enjoying the water will leave you if you neglect it.

There’s a lesson there. But I’m too much of an adult to find it.