By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – Here is a moment in today’s America.

I’m swimming laps at a community pool. It’s late afternoon on a hot day. The pavement on the pool deck burns the soles of people’s bare feet.

The pool is packed. The open swim area is shoulder-to-shoulder.

Each of the lap-swim lanes has at least two people in it.

In the lane next to me, two people – a man and a woman, both white, both 20 years younger than I am – do lazy laps. They wear sunglasses. Their heads never touch the water.

A guy a little older than I share the lane I’m in. He seems to know the couple in the next lane. He walks back and forth in the lane’s shallow end, talking with them as he does.

Often, he wanders into my path. Once, to get around him, I dive under the lane guide to swim past him underwater.

Neither he nor they seem to notice.

After a bit, the younger man hops out of the pool, leaving the woman by herself. She and the older man continue their conversation.

A heavyset African-American woman slips into the younger woman’s lane in the deep end. The black woman is older and has a tattoo. She works her way up the lane in a slow, determined dog paddle.

“Oh, great,” the young white woman mutters. “Why does she have to get in my lane?”

Minutes later, another swimmer – an Asian-American man who’s about 60 – hops into that lane and says he’d like to join them.

The white woman says he can’t.

They argue. The Asian-American man summons a lifeguard. The white woman swims away, sunglasses still in place.

I swim up. The Asian-American man and the African-American woman stand waist deep in the shallow water, fuming.

I tell them I only have one lap left to do and that one of them can take my spot. They thank me, but the Asian-American man is furious.

“People have to be nice and work with each other,” he says. “She can’t kick people out of the pool.”

I swim my last lap and climb out. The pool deck scalds the balls of my feet and my heels as I hop toward my towel and flip-flops.

The lifeguard summons two pool managers, both in their late teens. The Asian-American man wants the managers to affirm that he has a right to swim in the lane. The white woman says the lifeguards have done a horrible job policing the pool.

She points at the African-American woman, who has dog-paddled her way to the other end of the pool.

“Look,” the white woman says. “She can’t even swim. She doesn’t belong here.”

The white woman says she’s going to file a complaint about how the pool has been managed by the two teens.

The older man who shared the lane I was in has fled the scene. The lane now sits empty.

After more argument, the Asian-American man moves over to the empty lane. He begins a steady breaststroke.

The white woman gets out of the pool. The African-American woman continues her determined dog paddle.

I motion the pool managers over.

I suggest they ask their supervisors to post a rule saying swimmers must circle swim – go down on one side and come back on the other – when there are more than two people in a lane. That might keep lifeguards from having to practice poolside diplomacy.

The white woman sees us talking and charges over.

She doesn’t say excuse me or pardons me. She starts lecturing the two teenagers.

The issue, she says, is courtesy. The other swimmers should have asked her permission to swim in the lane.

She points at the Asian-American man swimming his breaststroke.

“He’s just rude,” she says. “He’s an a******.”

She again says she’s going to file a complaint.

“I didn’t come here to be stressed out,” she says.

She marches away.

The teens look at me. One asks me how everyone got so angry.

I shrug my shoulders. I don’t have a clue.

The late afternoon air is heavy with heat in a crowded little corner of my native land.

Just another moment in today’s America.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The City-County Observer posted this article without bias, opinion or editing.