I went swimming this morning at the YMCA. I don’t swim every day but boy does it feel great to start the day out this way. I’m going to be heading to Italy tomorrow so I wanted to get one last swim in before my trip.

I’m not an avid swimmer. In fact, I don’t actually love the sport, but it has grown on me these past few years. I do it because it really is the best (and safest) exercise I can do. Plus, I have turned it into a game of sorts which makes it not just good for my body but also stimulating for my mind. My mother would be pleased.

It started out as a desire to find a creative way of counting laps. Keeping a single number in my head for the length of each lap, even if it was a different number each time, was tedious so I wanted to come up with an alternative system that wasn’t too intense, but that kept my attention and that was also interesting. 

Taking inspiration from my uncle who once told me that he used his swimming practice to ponder specific topics that interested him, I asked myself, What interests me? and immediately, I thought of letters. I like letters. In some ways, letters are a lot easier for me to keep track of than numbers. Letters are the building blocks of words, and words are the building blocks of ideas, but more importantly for the issue at hand, there are 26 of them. I could count my laps using letters - one letter per lap - starting at A. By the time I got to Z, I would have completed 26 laps. For someone who up til then had struggled to swim 12 laps, all of a sudden I was motivated to swim double that.

Over time, this practice has evolved into something akin to a game that keeps me thinking and curious even when I’m not in the water. Before I begin swimming, I choose a theme. This theme will carry me through the entire alphabet.  The object of this game is to come up with at least one word within the theme that starts with that particular letter. 

I’ve swum through alphabets of colors, foods, animals, cities, languages, composers, instruments, songs, authors and books. I’ve found myself prepping mentally for a swim by researching a subject like flowers or seasonings so that I can get through the entire alphabet without drawing a blank. If I can’t come up with a word (and that happens a lot) I’ll look it up later.

Today I swam through NATO’s phonetic alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie et cetera. I thought I knew them all, but in the middle of the pool without my phone or Alexa handy, I was convinced that U was for Umbrella. It’s not. It’s not Umpire either. It’s Uniform. Now I know.

Now I have to go pack. See you on the other side of the Atlantic. (Thank goodness I don’t have to swim that!)

Random Fun Fact: the half-way point through the alphabet is between laps M (#13) and N (#14).