Adult swim, Reader!. Everyone out of the pool!
There was this one summer where I basically lived at the community pool. My routine was simple: swim until I was starving, sprint to the snack bar with soaking-wet dollar bills, and order whatever combination of pizza slices, soft pretzels, and freeze pops I could afford. Then I’d cannonball back in like it was an Olympic event.
And then... the lifeguard whistle blew.
Adult swim.
Which, as any child of the 80s knows, lasted approximately 156 minutes. At least that’s how it felt when you were dripping wet, shivering in the shade, and watching grownups bob around the deep end while “Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard blasted from the rusted poolside speakers. You’d sit on the edge of the concrete, chlorine-stung eyes locked on the water, just waiting for freedom to return. And when that whistle finally blew again, we launched off the edge like missiles.
No sunscreen reapplying. No hydration talk. No check-ins from grownups. Just sunburn, cheap food, and more hours in the water than any orthopedic surgeon would recommend.
And when the pool finally closed, I’d walk the mile home in $1 K-Mart flip-flops. The kind where the toe strap would inevitably snap three-quarters of the way home, forcing you to hobble awkwardly across gravel and hot blacktop like it was some kind of low-budget survival challenge.
Now, decades later, I find myself sitting poolside, not swimming, not snacking, just listening. And wouldn’t you know it? There it is again: someone talking about how “back in their day,” kids were tougher. Played outside until the streetlights came on. Drank from the hose. Didn’t need travel teams or mental skills training or breaks.
And it got me thinking...
We have to stop weaponizing nostalgia.
There’s a difference between fond memories and using those memories to discredit the very real challenges kids face today. Yes, we played outside more. Yes, we made up our own games and rode bikes without helmets. Yes, we did things unsupervised and survived. But let’s not pretend that made us mentally tougher, wiser, or more prepared for the world.
You know what else we had back in the day? A lot of unprocessed trauma. Kids who didn’t speak up. Parents who didn’t listen. Coaches who ruled by fear and silence. No one was talking about anxiety, depression, or burnout. We just stuffed it all down and called it “toughness.”
So when I hear someone say, “These kids today just need to toughen up,” I can’t help but cringe. Because maybe, just maybe, these kids don’t need to be tougher. Maybe they need to be heard. Maybe they need tools that we never had access to. Maybe they need adults who don’t compare their childhoods like it’s some sort of suffering contest.
I work with athletes every day who are juggling academics, training schedules, social pressure, and an internet that never sleeps. They aren’t soft. They’re saturated. They aren’t lazy. They’re exhausted from a system that demands performance without pause. They don’t need someone reminding them of how things “used to be.” They need someone to walk beside them in the world they’re actually living in.
The truth is, the pool is deeper now. The world is louder. The pressure is heavier. And if we’re still standing on the edge shouting stories about broken flip-flops and hose water, we’re not helping. We’re clinging.
If we want to make things better, we have to do more than reminisce. We have to reflect. We have to evolve. And yes, we have to learn a few new things ourselves. Like how to listen. How to validate. How to support instead of compare.
So maybe the question isn’t “Why can’t kids be more like we were?” Maybe it’s “Why aren’t we doing more to be what they need now?”
I think back to those adult swim breaks. Sitting there, legs dangling in the water, listening to Def Leppard while plotting exactly how I was going to belly flop my way back in the second that whistle blew. And as miserable as those breaks felt in the moment, they were never wasted. They gave me a second to breathe. To dry off. To rest. And when that break was over, I jumped back in with everything I had.
Maybe that’s what today’s athletes need from us. Not reminders of how we had it harder. But permission to pause. Space to breathe. And someone who’s not shouting from the edge of the pool, but sitting beside them, waiting for the whistle too.