"You're a swimmer, aren't you?"
My professor caught me by surprise. I'd slipped into the lead on our field trip to the Writing Center--they had free food, so I'd already been there--and she'd pulled me up short with the question. I fumbled for a moment, trying to decide how she knew. I didn't smell like chlorine: I'd been out of a pool for weeks. My hair wasn't wet: my alarm hadn't gone off that morning in time to take a shower. The dead-giveaway shoulders were disguised: my backpack made it impossible to know that they were any wider than the rest of me.
"Yeah, I am. How'd you know?"
"That streak of hair on the back of your neck is bleached blond by the chlorine."
I laughed aloud. I'd been picked out as a swimmer many times, but never by the gathering of too-short hairs on the nape of my neck. "Duck fluff" was always a subject of mild amusement for my teammates and me, but I had never been branded on account of the extra light streak at my nape.
5 comments:
I remember I used to know this swimmer kid who had old man style gray hair and he said it was from swimming. i always got a kick out of that.
Yup. That happens when folks don't wear caps, haha!
i think the worst was knowing that the blond-gray was supposed to be a dark red-brown
Haha yeah that would be rather disturbing. I don't know what that kid's hair was supposed to be. I didn't know him before his hair went gray.
The dark red-brown was nothing. A year after this one guy graduated, I learned that his hair was a dark, dark brown nigh unto black. I always thought it was supposed to be [euphemism]silver[/euphemism].
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