A Girl's Life Online Read Free

“Can’t you just leave it alone, Katie?” It was just a five-minute ride to school but I didn’t stop pressing the buttons until I found something I liked.

    Like most schools, I guess, mine was often frustrating and I felt misunderstood a lot of the time. The most alienating part of school is the way they separate you into groups, as if to say, “This girl will be a success, but this one won’t.” Like most kids, I never got into the program for gifted students, and it bothered me. We all knew what it meant.
    Fortunately, there was one teacher I felt close to—the choral director, Ms. Montarro. She loved students who cooperated with early-morning call, and I did. Our group was called the Choraleers. Twenty-five kids from the seventh and eighth grades met three or four mornings a week. We mostly sang cheesy stuff, but we were pretty good. We sang the National Anthem at Mets games, and we sang at the all-state convention and for Congress.
    In school, I was probably most devoted to music. Outside school, it was swimming. In fact, by the eighth grade swimming had become the major focus of my life, and as a result the New Canaan swim team—a highly competitive, nationally known club—was a big part of our family’s life. My mother was very friendly with the coach and the other parents. And my younger sister, Carrie, had started swimming, too.
    I first got involved with swimming when I was a preschooler and went for lessons at the YMCA. Their system started kids out as “guppies” who wore water wings and splashed around the pool with their mothers. (I went with my nanny.) Swimming was an important safety thing in our family and my mother insisted we work through minnow, fish, flying fish, to the shark level, which was the highest, so we would all be able to handle ourselves in the water.
    By the third grade I had noticed the swim team, which also worked out at the Y, and started to think that I might like to try it. Unlike other sports, which require a lot of hand-eye coordination—more than I possess—swimming is a matter of practice and commitment, two things I could manage. When I told my parents that I was interested in joining the team, they were excited that I wanted to participate in any kind of sport.
    I began competing in the fourth grade, which meant I also started practicing many hours a week. The main feeling I had at those early practices was coldness. Swimmers move fastest through cold water, so the pool at the Y was always chilly. I was usually one of the last ones in, and I never got used to the cold.
    The team competed mainly in regional meets, but every year we qualified for some national tournaments as well. I suppose it was exciting to travel to different meets, but the most I ever saw of any of the cities we visited would be the hotel, the pool, the airport, and, if I was lucky, a restaurant. It didn’t really matter if I was in California or Florida, it all seemed the same to me.
    I invested a lot of time and effort in swimming, so much that it became a big part of my identity. My parents got hooked into the swim team, too. At the pool there were always two competitions. The first was the actual swim meet. Even though we all wore swim caps and bathing suits, everyone knew each other, or at least the competition. I know I would sit there and inspect the muscles of each swimmer, how defined they were and well trained they looked. You couldn’t hide any of it in a swim suit, and I had a pretty good idea about who was a serious competitor even before we got into the water.
    While the swimmers competed on the pool deck and in the water, upstairs in the bleachers the parents were competing, too. They kept track of who was swimming when and what times were needed to be able to finish where. The parents were always talking with each other, trying to figure out who had done what. They wanted to know how much extra help a particular swimmer might be