"Booyah"

"Hi mein Sunnybunny. Here’s Mommeli."

Yes, my Mom uses pet names. Don’t pretend yours doesn’t.

Yes, we randomly insert German words and phrases into regular conversation. Maybe you don’t do that.

Nobody’s perfect.

"I just wanted to let you know that not only you can swim 26 laps."

Ohhh. The gauntlet is down.

My family is full of swimming folk. Dad was a state championship swimmer in high school and went on to letter at Georgia Tech. I swam competitively for years and have joined my dad on several swims across the 3.5-mile-wide Pamlico River.

When my uncle was little they knocked the bottom out of his crib and set it half on the beach, half in the water so he could adjust to swimming at an early age.

There is no tide on the Pamlico.

And my German-born mother won’t soon be stealing any podiums from Michael Phelps, but she’s giving me a workout.

Swimming is great exercise for someone whose body is no longer the best suited for mountain climbing or ultramarathons.

It’s hard to get hurt swimming. Unless you drown.

Water, which according to a bunch of sites I just Googled, is something like 800 times denser than air, provides sufficient resistance to really work your muscles, but isn’t hard enough to subject you to the shock of really hitting anything. That means I won’t tear up my knees swimming, which is good cause I’m busy ripping them up with everything else I do.

So I guess swimming is one of those sports you can pretty much do all your life. Thinking about it, you were actually doing it before you were born, floating around….

Um, speaking of Mommies, mein ist now in a friendly competition with me. Hardcore swimmers would scoff at our times and distances, but it’s good exercise and we’re enjoying it – she’ll swim 22 lengths of a 25-meter pool, so I swim 24. So she swims 26….

We may have to handicap me, as I’m significantly younger/more foolhardy (she just had her birthday – Happy Birthday, Mom!). I dunno, maybe I have to swim double her distances, perhaps do it with cinderblocks around my ankles.

So she left me a voicemail yesterday taunting me with her recent aquatic exploit – 26 lengths.

So I went out last night and swam 27.

Um, I think the expression is… (I hope I get this right), "Booyah"…?

I’m actually no good at trash talking. Lemme get some help from our sports desk….