(Reading; pt 2)
Nancy King took up synchronised swimming when she was 77. She had worked all her adult life, raised four children and on retiring didn't suffer an identity loss or sudden crash in ambition. She volunteered to teach knitting and crochet classes for a charity for the blind.
One day she went to the pool to meet the Aquadettes. "I knew how to swim. 1.
read on
Choose from A-H, there is one extra.
A There are always mean people. I don't care."
B The Aquadettes aren't all best friends, but they are a close and supportive network for each other, at what can be a difficult transitional life stage.
C What can you do with all these wrinkles?" She smiles. "I'm 76 – but as far as I'm concerned I could be 56."
D When her 23-year-old grandson came to see the show one year, "he couldn't believe what old Grandma was up to".
E Instead, husbands are permitted to help backstage, with lighting or filming, and are referred to within Laguna Woods as the Aquadudes.
F In fact, the biggest controversy in the team is the mandatory all-black swimming costumes, which hide nothing.
G She does the best she can. She will never be the most synchronised.
H Then they asked me to do a somersault. I said, 'I haven't done a somersault probably since I was six.'
How'd it work out?
"It worked out fine, believe it or not! So I thought maybe I could do the rest. I loved it, I was like a two-year-old."
Men aren't allowed to join, although they frequently ask. But, says King, you can't put them in long gloves and they'd complain about headdresses; really they are no fun to design costumes for. 2.
The costume changes are the hardest thing, going from a wet suit to a dry one, and the swimmers wear tights under their suits to aid the process. No one who joins has any training in the sport and the team tries, as far as possible, to operate a no-yelling policy when someone messes up. "We have one who gets into a little difficulty," says King. "But we don't holler at her. 3.
Little Mermaid-like, there is a stark and moving contrast between the freedom of movement team members have in the water as opposed to on land. The show this year was the first time Bouer used her walker to get to the poolside. Before, she would go in on someone's arm. "I do remember one man saying in intermission, 'I wonder why they let that handicapped person in?' 4.
The Aquadettes have featured in adverts and on breakfast TV in the US, and Bouer has attracted some attention for her use of medical marijuana, which helps her with the side-effects of MS. "I just carry a tiny pipe in the car. A couple of cigarettes. I grew my own plants. But I use it only for nausea."
5.
"The ladies are all sizes," says Andrews Link. "But they're very confident."
"It doesn't seem to matter anymore," says King.
"I was completely blase," says Bouer. "I took for granted my physical skills, but I've never been a beauty. I never thought about it. I've never really learned to do make-up. 6.
A team member might stop swimming, but no one really retires. You become an Aquadette emeritus and do the costumes or cheerlead. Without the team, says King, she'd be a couch potato and spend far too much time in front of a computer. 7.
the guardian
californian girls
