Chapter 10 ten

I have always loved sports. The complex sports center in my unit has all kinds of facilities that I can use. As if the Aceh trails are not enough, there is also a small sports field and track, as well as various sports equipment and a ball game. The hall, a bowling alley, a typical gymnasium with ribs all around, and next door is a storage room with pommel horses, jumping boxes, bats, hockey sticks, and lots of nets for balls of all sizes.The smaller rooms on the second floor are used for cardio, fitness training, spinning, dance, yoga, fencing, etc. There is also a weight training room.The swimming pool is right in the middle of the sports center.

Elsa and I wandered around and I was drooling watching.I saw people doing high jump, long jump, discus throw, badminton, tennis, indoor hockey and volleyball.We pushed open the door of each small room and looked in. We saw two women playing pelota, a group of people in cotton coats learning judo, a group of people dancing African dances, a man doing Tai Chi alone, a group of People gathered around the fitness trainer, punching hard to the music.When the female coach saw us standing at the door, she waved her hand and invited us to join.We smiled, waved our hands politely, and pointed to the clothes and shoes on our bodies, indicating that they were inappropriate.Elsa wears loafers and I wear sandals.The female trainer nodded, and we closed the door and walked into the gym next door.

The gym is not very big, but it is well-equipped, the air is fresh but not cold, the music is very dynamic and the volume is not too loud.About five or six people were exercising at this time, but no one noticed us, just continued to weight training, walking on the treadmill, doing heavy pulling or pushing movements, panting, looking grim, focusing on Do one set of exercises at a time for the muscle group you want to work. I don't understand.Aisha whispered.We walk among rows of well-oiled, well-functioning gym equipment. don't understand what?I asked. What a luxury these devices are!How much does this cost taxpayers?

This is true.I agree, but my mood is more excited than unhappy.It seems like a lot of money to take care of us. Yes, what's the point? I didn't answer, not because I had nothing to say, but because something else caught my attention and distracted me from the subject of luxury equipment.I saw a man wearing a T-shirt and shorts, using a leg-bend training machine, regularly bending the back of his thighs, pulling up the bar plate, and making a distinct exhalation sound every time he exerted force.His face, arms, and legs showed some symptoms of the disease, with bluish-black and reddish-brown bumps on his body ranging from the size of a pinky fingernail to the size of a medium-sized birch leaf.Some of the lumps had ruptured and suppurated, and looked disgusting.He seemed to have some kind of disease, which reminded me of Kaposi's sarcoma.In my youth I worked in health care centers and home care units and saw people with AIDS suffer from the disease.A mass similar to Kaposi's sarcoma on a man's body expands and contracts with muscle action.As we passed the man, I glanced curiously but cautiously at the leg-curl machine, and saw the man pulling a four-hundred-pound bar with the back of his thigh.Not bad for a man in his sixties to sixty-five years of age.Although I couldn't see what disease he had, at least it wasn't AIDS.

Aisha didn't seem to notice the condition of the man's skin and the strength of his legs, just sighed and continued to narrate her point. We are like happy pigs or pheasants, the only difference is that both pigs and chickens just live happily in the moment and ignore everything else.Hope they are. An old memory popped up suddenly, I laughed and said: You know what, Elsa, you haven't changed at all. What's the meaning? Do you still remember that our class in the fourth grade of elementary school went on a trip to the zoo? Uh, it's blurry, what's the matter? You see the animals pacing up and down the fence, especially the carnivores and the elephants, and a big bird that doesn't have enough room to fly properly and gets very angry.You may be the only one of your classmates who knows that pacing back and forth is unnatural.Do you remember?remember what you did

Shouldn't it be letting them out?Probably not, I don't remember doing that. Then as soon as you see the zookeepers or staff in the zoo, I say: just sneak over, get behind them, and yell: Gestapo!do you remember? Aisha giggled and said: Hearing you say that, I remembered, then you remember you and Lota and we walked on, chatting about childhood memories, leaving the gym and walking into the echoing pool lounge, smelling of chlorine.We feel as if a layer of cotton is wrapped around our body, isolating everything outside. We didn't bring swimsuits, but Aisha heard there were clean second-hand swimsuits for rent, so we went to ask a nearby waiter in a white uniform.He said no problem and led us to a closet with swim trunks, bikinis and one-piece swimsuits arranged by size.There are towels and bath towels in the adjoining cupboard.

You choose it yourself, the attendant said: After swimming, just put the swimsuit in the laundry bag in the changing room.Towels and bathing suits go in separate laundry bags, simple but practical, right? The servant smiled.We thanked him, took what we needed, went to the women's changing room, each found a locker, took off our clothes, and then went to the shower with bare feet, topless and a towel around our lower body. Fortunately, there were not many people in the shower room, because as soon as we saw the naked woman in it, the insulating cotton layer made of childhood memories fell off and disappeared.There were six naked women before us, three of whom had the same symptoms and symptoms as the man at the gym who used the leg-curl machine.All had one or more surgical scars, mostly on the abdomen.The joints of the two women were swollen and twisted, and their movements were slow, accompanied by twitching, as if the whole body was in pain.The other woman was obviously having trouble breathing and was moving very slowly, always staying close to something she could support like a wall, a faucet, a friend so that when she had to stop and inhale, inhale, inhale, there was room You can hold it up, and then stagger forward after taking in the air.

As soon as Elsa and I walked into the steaming and very humid shower door, we stopped suddenly on the tiled floor, holding borrowed swimsuits in our hands, with a towel wrapped around our lower bodies, and stood frozen in place.Some of the six women stood under the shower head, some stood by the faucet, and some were washing their swimsuits.They turned to look at us, smiled friendly, and said hi, except for the woman who was having trouble breathing, who nodded wearily and stood with one hand on the tile wall. It was Aisha who took the first step. She firmly pulled the towel away, stepped forward, hung the towel on the hook, walked into the shower, and turned on the faucet.I follow her movements like a robot.Finally we put on our bathing suits and went into the pool area.There are two large pools in the pool area. The deep pool is 75 feet long with spring mats and diving boards. The shallow pool is 150 feet long. There are also two jacuzzi pools. There is no children's pool.

Without saying a word, Elsa went straight to the diving board and climbed up.There are four levels of diving platforms, each with a diving board jutting out towards the pool.I thought she would climb onto the lower diving board, get ready, and dive with her feet down into the water, but that wasn't the case.She continued to climb, passed the third floor, and climbed to the top floor.Standing below and looking up, I thought she was only a few feet away from touching the ceiling. With an easy, confident step, she stepped onto the diving board, took a few light jumps, and stood on the edge of the diving board, her big toe protruding slightly.She stood still with her arms outstretched, looking out, waiting for the diving board to stop bouncing.On the thick glass ceiling above her, I saw the vague shadows of the soles of shoes of passers-by passing through the square above.I stood by the pool below the diving board watching Elsa and felt a dragging dizziness under my feet.I always get dizzy easily.

Elsa begins to bend her knees, once, twice, bouncing the diving board up and down, and on the third time, she pulls her arms back as if to grab her body, then straightens her knees, springs up, and jerks her arms up and down. Straight, over the head, the whole body forms a straight line from the tips of the toes to the tips of the fingers.She jumped off the diving board like a spear, or rather, the diving board was like a spring, shooting her into the air.She flew towards the ceiling, drew an arc, leaped a short distance, then bent her upper body down, close to her legs, straightened her body again, extended her legs back and up, and turned into a straight spear again, only this time Dive down.In the blink of an eye, she had cut through the water with only a sound like a whip, splashed a little, and dived into the water.This image was told to me by my memory, I looked at the image in my mind, and tried to describe it: Aisha penetrated the water, making a crackling sound, like a cracking sound, without any splash around.I remember her leaving only gentle ripples on the water, spreading out from the point of impact.

Aisha was swimming on the bottom of the water, and I looked down through the ripples on the water surface and saw her silhouette fluctuating constantly.She surfaced on the other side of the pool, climbed up the metal ladder, pushed her wet hair back, and flicked the water out of her ears. Oh, indescribably comfortable.She saw me coming around the pool and said so. In awe and admiration, I asked a stupid question: Where did you learn it? Oh, she laughed and said: I used to dive when I was young, I started in middle school, if I remember correctly, it should be in fifth grade, and I started competing in a few years later. Then you must have been great before, and I said: Oh, I mean, you are still very good now. Thanks, I was really good before, won some awards, it was fun.I mean diving is fun, but I'm not ambitious enough to be the best.I dive because it feels liberating, which is beautiful in a way.It was a beautiful experience, with a touch of danger that I liked.What I care about is not a lot of medals and trophies that are there or not. I stared at Aisha, not knowing what to say. I know what you're thinking, she said: You're thinking if I keep playing and being the top player, I might not be here. Almost, yes, I admit it: for example, if you win an Olympic medal I know, she said: Then I will be a positive icon for many young girls, and I will be protected for the rest of my life.But I gotta tell you, Dolly, I don't regret leaving those never-ending games one bit.That's not my passion, I'll never understand what it's like to win for the sake of winning.What's the point of putting all your energy into trying to make yourself better at a single project that has nothing to do with you?Do you understand? I don't understand, I honestly answer: I don't really understand. Yes, she said: I can see you don't understand.If you understood, you probably wouldn't come here either.Shall we go swimming?Better to go to another pool though so no one would jump off and hit us on the head. We swam twenty times back and forth.After three or four warm-up swims, I started to speed up.I swim breaststroke.I've never been able to learn any other strokes, but I have strong arms and legs and can swim fast when I'm in a good mood, which is when I'm in a good mood.My arms pushed the water away quickly and powerfully, and I kicked back with my legs. After twenty swims, I came out of the water feeling as heavy as a whale.I pulled myself up to the pool, splashed an unbeautiful splash, and waited for Aisha.Aisha swims relatively slowly, and there are a few trips left to finish the swim.I was out of breath, my heart was beating fast, steady, and regular, and I felt full of life.