Something about Dirk's class going swimmingly made think of my days at Roosevelt Junior High. You can see a clip of what is now the middle school. There was a pool at the school which meant that swimming was included in gym class. I'm not sure if everyone today goes through this rite of passage, but I remember fondly the tight fitting (almost spedo-style) matching suits everyone wore. When I did a google search for an image of Junior High school swimming suits, two of the first three sites were from Minnesota, so perhaps this is a regional thing. I couldn't find an appropriate image and I don't think I will post the pictures from my junior high yearbook. Wearing those suits was such an uncomfortable experience, but I still savor the slinky skintight memories.

Not much has changed except there are more computers--well I should mention that we had the original apple computers when I was there and I learned to program in the powerful language BASIC in my math class. Now that I mention it I see how this whole train of thought connects. My math teacher in eighth grade--who taught us programming--was also my swim coach. I also distinctly remember a film about the metric system that made me very ashamed to be using those dirty English units. I'm glad we got away from all of that.