Michelle

She was a swimmer. She swam in pools, lakes and rivers. Sometimes she had vivid dreams of swimming in a big, comically over-sized bathtub full of jello, or saline solution or yarn. These were often followed by dreams of her doing lots of cart wheels on a dirt road near a cabin that she drew a picture of when she was 30. She was only 28.

Growing up she often wished she was a figure skater or a gymnast. But after a few sips of hot chocolate (the first always scalding her tongue) she returned, like a wayward owl returning to the other owls, to the pool. Her pool.

She often swam to escape her problems. Other times she swam to create problems for others. And there were times the swimming was the problem. This was not one of those times. The time at the moment was 10 am. This was neither interesting or important. And yet it made her lips curl into something that was clearly meant to be a smile, but totally failed.

She swam and swam and swam. It allowed her to relax. Sometimes she became so relaxed she felt like she could fall asleep. Other times she was so relaxed that she felt like she was lying on a pillow made of tofu. If she allowed herself to be completely relaxed while swimming she sometimes imagined she was a janitor on the night shift at the tofu-pillow making factory, sweeping up all of the waste on the floors and coming home smelling of soy products and covered with thread.

It was clearly not a good idea to be so relaxed especially when she was in a pool, so she often had to think stressful thoughts like she was being chased by sharks, or aggressive milkmen or her grade 9 math teacher who reminded her of a cross between a shark and a milkman only with glasses and a calculator (that he used to refer to as "the shark").

Throughout her life she was always asked if she was training for a race?, trying to get fitter?, working on her strokes? Her answers were usually "yes", "no", "maybe", or "I've told you 100 times to leave me alone!". One time her answer was "cheese" and strangely it made sense at the time.

On her way home from her swim she listened to the radio. She wasn't sure if listening was the correct term as she missed a lot of school in grade 1. Sometimes if she was in a good mood she would sing along with the news and say funny one-line retorts during love songs. The radio also made her cry hysterically and shriek. She never understood why. She would drive home and scream out, while crying and shrieking and singing, "Why?" When no answer came, she would yell "Where?" Which was often followed by "Because?" She was always trying to turn single words into questions.

Deep down inside she hated her fence. And even though she often thought about that irrational hatred, she couldn't figure out where it came from. Of course there was the time when she was five when a fence broke her dog's leg. A fence also beat her out in the talent show in grade 6 with its near-perfect rendition of Pachelbel. And there was that time a fence stood her up on their date to prom. And, she could never forgive or forget the time the fence just got up and left and hitchhiked across the country to join a commune of hippies. Her inability to connect the dots was mind-numbingly confusing. She also hated Connect The Dot books.

Her yard had a few trees and some small bushes. Once she sat outside and tried painting a picture of her yard, and the result sold for $25 at a neighbourhood street sale. The painting looked more like a decapitated lion holding a snail then her yard, which is maybe why it didn't fetch it's asking price of $45000.

She often dreamed of rearranging her house and moving her bedroom next to the kitchen so that she could greatly reduce the amount of time between eating and sleeping and vice versa. All of that wasted time- some days upwards of 4 minutes. She also thought of moving the bathroom so it was the entrance room to the house. This would have most likely created a 500% increase in the number of guests who took showers at her house while also leading towards a sharp decline in the overall sanity of the same people. The connection between these two projections was unclear.

Each room in her house had a name. She wanted to let each room select it's own name as she had major problems when she had assigned them random hairstyles and birthdays. This also sounded fine and good until the utility closet chose "Paul" which was also the name of her "bully" from grade four. Paul was actually in love with her, but she read so far between the lines of his love confession that she mistook it for a list of threats.

Every morning when she woke up she was instantly bored. That was until she came up with the idea of sleeping inside full body molds in the shapes of the letters of the alphabet. This meant that for each of the first 26 days of the month she slept in a differently shaped position that would have made her contortionist happy (she held the belief that everyone had their own personal contortionist just like everyone had their very own suction room). After the 26th day she slept curled up in a fetal position shaking and eating nachos. 

Once awake, she ate breakfast, brushed her teeth, changed and headed for the pool. This was her life. She would have described it as an unhealthy combination of water sports and wiener dogs - with the wiener dog part making no sense at all except in a figurative sense. Of course no one ever asked her to describe her life  as she usually had a certain "leave me alone unless you were thinking of selling me a yo-yo" look perpetually on her face, especially when on her way to or from the pool, which was much of the time.

Her name was Michelle. Though she often thought she reminded herself of a Catherine.