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Swimming Style

May 3, 2018

He often would go to a gym. He had a membership. On this day he went to the gym and was swimming. He liked swimming. It was refreshing and he was able to relax while swimming. He always swam breaststroke. While swimming, he usually wouldn't think about anything, only swim. But on this day he felt bored and started to think about something at random: "I'm only swimming breaststroke because I can only swim this style. And my way of swimming is not good. I envy others to be able to swim the crawl, backstroke, and butterfly. But, to come to think of it, why do people only swim those?  I've never seen any other swimming style. Why?" He started to think: "Maybe people started to swim a long long time ago, the Stone Age? Maybe the breaststroke was invented first." To him, the breaststroke seemed to be easier to start with because although he was not good at sports, but he could manage to swim this way even though he never learned how to swim from instructors.   He continued to think: "Maybe one day a person might mimic the way a frog swims. Maybe if the person observed frogs closely every day, like putting a frog in a bowl and observing it. Maybe he/she would start to practice in a river or a lake or the sea. Maybe his/her friends would make fun of him/her, but he/she would persistently try and try. Sometimes inventers are lonely ... Or there might be a sad story: Maybe she had a boyfriend who was a fisherman. One day, the boat that her boyfriend rode hit some rocks and started to sink. They started to swim to the land. But, unfortunately, they only knew doggy paddle. It was very slow and inefficient. At last, her boyfriend and the other fishermen were too tired, and they couldn't make it to land, and drowned. Her grief was deep. She thought that if they knew the way to swim faster and more efficient then they wouldn't have died. She started to experiment with new methods of swimming. Her parents and sisters suggested to her to stop because it seemed too difficult. But, she persisted. Finally she figured out a new way. She introduced it on the first anniversary of her boyfriend's death. People were crying looking at her swimming. It was a swimming style that they had never seen before, beautiful ..." He was sometimes absorbed to think fancy things. He stopped this story and started to rethink: "Anyways. Somebody invented the breaststroke. It might have been sensational. Breaststroke was rather faster than doggy paddle or other primitive swimming styles. Like the story of her boyfriend, there must have been a lot of fishermen who drowned to death. Being a fisherman is one of the most dangerous occupations, both at present and in the past. If swimming styles are improved, the percentage of survivors must increase. Maybe in the world of fishermen, many stories might have been passed down about good methods to survive accidents. So among fishermen to fishermen, the breaststroke style of swimming was spread, and thus it spread around the world ..." He felt moved from the drama of professionals although this was just his imagination. "And, ..." he thought: "And it proceeded to the next stage. People in the world who learned breaststroke were very surprised. They might have thought why wasn't this method invented earlier. And they soon started to think, 'If this method existed, there should be other methods that might be faster and more efficient.' In the world, people at the same time started to compete to find other methods. If people have momentum, people could do anything. Maybe the next one was the crawl.  Other styles, backstroke and butterfly seemed improbable. Maybe this time a person experimented looking at a fish in the sea from morning until night and learned how to get the driving force using his/her body and hands and feet. That person must have been a very intensive person. How about the next one? Different from others, the inventor of the backstroke seemed to be a lazy person. He/she thought what was the easiest way of swimming? Just floating was the easiest. Maybe when floating, he or she started to move his/her arms and legs little by little and got the back stroke. The person who invented the butterfly must be an eccentric person. He or she wanted to surprise others by inventing a strange way of swimming. One day, he/she was experimenting in the river, a butterfly came to him/her..." If he could check on the internet about the invention of those styles, maybe he could get the truth. But it seemed tasteless and he decided not to. And he thought about something else: "But there is no other swimming styles invented after their appearances, why?  Because only those four are the items of the Olympic Games?" This logic seemed weak. He started to think. "There should be some theories about this because of human beings' long history of invention ..."

*breaststroke :平泳ぎ
*envy :うらやましい
*the Stone Age: 石器時代
*invent :発明する
*to start with :始めるのに
*manage to :なんとかする
*mimic :マネする
*observe :観察する
*doggy paddle :犬かき
*inefficient :機能的でない
*grief :悲しみ
*anniversary :回忌、記念日
*fancy :空想的な
*pass down  :引き継ぐ
*improbable :ありそうもない
*intensive :一生懸命の
*eccentric :変わった
*tasteless :味気ない