Saturday at a Summer Swim Meet

Swim meet day at the big pool in Walnut Creek. Full sun by mid-morning, pennant flags strung over every lane, and the fence lined three deep with parents holding programs and phones.

Most of my time was down at the lane 1 end, where the youngest heats got staged. A coach in a straw hat spent the whole stretch bent over, steering kids in yellow caps onto the bench, pointing them down their lane, retrieving the ones who wandered. The timers stood by with clipboards and flip-flops, sunglasses on, waiting through the gaps between heats, which is most of a swim meet if we're honest.

The scoreboard across the pool kept scrolling times in red. One kid in a red cap stood at lane 3 forever before her heat finally went off. The buckets at each lane were labeled by hand, a numeral in marker, and somehow that felt right for the whole operation.