I wanted to swim on January 2nd, so with my gym bag ready, I drove to the gym.
I got inside but stopped in the second floor lobby to look through the glass windows to see whether the swimming pool on the ground/first floor was occupied.
Sure enough, all the lanes were full of swimmers who were more than eager to burn off holiday calories.
Since my stomach was growling with hunger, I decided to turn around and leave the gym to drive to the nearest Burger King instead of waiting for a swimmer to vacate the lane for me.
Eager to redeem my T-Mobile Tuesdays’ Free Whopper, I logged on to the Burger King app on my iPhone to do so.
Unfortunately, due to my excitement and continued ignorance on how to redeem my Free Whopper, I inadvertently ordered an Impossible Whopper instead. Rather than declaring my ignorance to the clerk and confusing her in the process, I decided to proceed with the order along with fries and soda.
As the clerk was ringing up my order, I asked whether my soda was discounted being a senior citizen.
“Only the coffee is discounted, sir”, she replied.
“No, I don’t think so. I checked the Burger King website a few days ago and it stated that soft drinks were also discounted.”
Sensing the slight irritation in my tone, she fetched the manager to address my insistence. As she was doing so, I hurriedly pulled up the senior discount policy on my iPhone.
“Burger King Senior Discounts: 10% off (60+) plus additional discounts on coffee and soft drinks.”
Armed with that policy on my iPhone, I was able to convince both clerk and manager, especially the manager who a week ago strongly stated that soft drinks were not discounted. An olive wreath to the victor!
Finding a table in the almost-empty fast food joint, I enjoyed my Impossible Whopper while happily thinking that I still had a Free Whopper to redeem and that I would now easily get a discounted soda when I come to visit Burger King again. Huzzah!
With swimming being still on my to-do list, I decided to go to the gym early on January 3rd. And, as I expected, there was an empty swimming lane.
I hurried to the gym locker to switch to my mid-thigh jammer swimsuit. I sprayed my goggles with anti-fog, beelined to the shower room for a quick rinse, and made it by the empy lane in no time.
I put on my flippers, checked the temperature of the water, pinched my nose, closed my eyes, and jumped into the pool.
Whoa! My flippered feet touched the bottom of the pool in a millisecond! I didn’t realize that the “Beginner” lane was only 4-foot deep. It was such a hard landing too; I could have broken a foot or both. And pinching my nose and closing my eyes was for nothing!
Anyhoo, ignoring the other swimmers’ reactions to my big splash in the shallow lane, I eagerly started a lap like a hungry merman on a dinner hunt.
Now, I wasn’t sure whether it was the Impossible Whopper that I snarfed up the night before or the day’s early morning coffee, but in the middle of my 2nd lap, I broke wind like an elephant snorting with excitement.
Fortunately, the dreaded sound was muffled by the stroke splashes and my butt being deep in the water, but what happened immediately thereafter was very, very interesting!
First of all, my mid-thigh jammer swimsuit, being of 82% polyester and 18% spandex, not only reduced drag against the water, but it also did not allow any trapped air to escape.
Consequently, the trapped fart, which broke into three big bubbles, was hydromassaging my butt. The bubbles slid from left to right in their desperate attempts to find the nearest distance to the surface.
It was such an epiphany since not only did the bubbles make the swim enjoyable, but they helped keep my butt afloat. My mid-thigh jammer suit turned into a somewhat rubber inner tube.
It was difficult to sustain a self-gratifying smile during the rest of my 40-lap exercise.
I pressed the trapped gas out of my swimsuit as I reached for the pool ladder. Fortunately, there was no one else nearby.
I will eat a lot of beans before swimming next time. HA HA HA!
