The Fine Art of Showing Off

Believe it or not, when I was 18, my muscles were well built in the chest and arms. This came from spending most of my free time swinging on rope swings with the other guys in the neighborhood. After a while, with long shaggy hair and a decent tan, my wife said I began to resemble Tarzan. And so, that is how I looked when I went to my first quarter of schooling at Northwest Nazarene College in Idaho. I just mention that so I can better mentor young men in the fine art of showing off.

NNC had quite an athletic center with a good weight room, track, gymnastic area, and an Olympic size pool with high dives. Since I was not at college to actually study, this was where I spent my time.

I would be remiss not to interject right now that to master the fine art of showing off, you must have an audience.

The swim suits which were issued to the men at the pool were all the same, a red stretchy piece of material resembling brief underpants with a drawstring, which I might add required every knot I learned in Boy Scouts to keep tied up. There was little or no lining so there was really nothing left to the imagination.

The women wore one-piece suits of the same material and lining so once we left the locker rooms, our best bet was to get into the pool as quickly as possible to avoid embarrassment.

Being a church college, two weeknights at the pool were for men only and two nights for women, but Friday night it was co-ed. Cool! This brings me to my lesson in the fine art of showing off.

It was a Friday night co-ed swim and as I entered the pool area with the small piece of fabric around my waist, I noticed a pocket of ladies my age standing in the shallow end. I could tell they were watching me and pretending I had not noticed them, I concocted a plan to wow them with my superb acrobatic ability.  Casually I walked to the three-meter board.

At home in the summer I had been working on a flip with a twist on the three-meter board at the lake and I was quite good at it. The board was stiff and had a solid bounce. (After this incident I made a mental note to always preflight the diving board before jumping but naturally this time I had not.)

Climbing to the top of the ladder, I did my obligatory flexes just in case the ladies were still looking and then travelled at full speed for the end of the board. To make it look impressive, I hit the end with as much weight as I could put on it. And then the problems started: someone had rolled the board’s tension all the way back to maximum flexibility. I can remember the tip of the board from three meters up almost dropping down to touch the water. I can also remember thinking to myself, “Well this is not good.”

And then — “Yikes!!”

The board shot back up with such force I can only compare it to being fired out of a circus cannon. It sent me on a trajectory arc toward the ceiling rafters and since I had positioned myself for the flip with a twist, I was committed to it.

If things had gone right, I would have seen the ceiling lights flash by me once but from what I can remember, they just kept flashing past my eyes since I was obviously spinning out of control. And then, after what seemed like the tenth rotation, I hit the water. It was a good solid hit. Somewhere around the low back. And with fate’s cruel joke nearly complete, the water grabbed my piece of fabric, pulled it from where it should be and deposited it somewhere in the vicinity of my ankles.

The pain from the slapped skin was akin to being drawn and quartered without sedation. The wind was knocked out of me and I was seeing black spots, but I do remember the feel of a hooked pole from the female lifeguard pulling me out of the pool.

The art of showing off should never be taken lightly. Since that unfortunate incident in 1973, I have since refined my antics although some may argue.

This I know, to all you young men out there, you must hone your own ability to show off. I might suggest though . . . preflight the diving board.

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