Reunions

I was eating lunch when George called, with a law school classmate in the Atlanta airport, on layover for flights to California. "Hey Trevor," he said, "there's an alumni water polo game tonight, can you make it?"
"What time?"
"7:30"
"At Canyonview?"
"Yeah."
"Cool, my flight lands at five. See you there."

I get there and sure enough, there's a dozen of my best friends from high school, already pale reflections of the athletes we used to be, trying to prove otherwise by playing a lineup of seventeen year olds form our alma mater. The little punks jump to an early lead, because they're quick on the counterattack, while most of us can't swim two pool lengths without losing our breath. Tyler confesses to me after the game, "I hated turnovers so much, I got mad when they missed shots. It was like, 'bastards are making me swim!'"

Our only saving grace was a deep bench - we could do a full line change after every goal, and by the end of the game pretty much needed to. We pulled away in the third quarter once John singled out their ringer and decided to shut down their offense single-handedly, and the rest of us began to compensate for our lack of conditioning by repeatedly sinking the naively rule-following high schoolers. In the end, their youth and skill succumbed to our age and treachery, and we grizzled veterans (none of us older than 25) departed, panting and wheezing, into the night.