Near drownings and celebrity sitings.........

"Excuse me, you seem to be having trouble swimming," I said to a young Chinese woman at the pool this morning, after I had finished my laps.  "Yes, I nearly drown!  I am trying to teach myself," she added.  Well, no.  You can't teach yourself to breathe in the water, something she could not manage, which was why she was drowning --not that the lifeguards noticed.  "Come with me to the kiddie pool and I will show you," I said.  She was dumbfounded.

So we went to the baby pool and I tried to show her how to breathe, in through the mouth and out through the nose.  But she couldn't get it!  Finally I said, "put on your goggles and watch me underwater, you'll see the bubbles."  She did and said, "Oh, bubbles!"  Yeah, you will never get water up your nose if you know how to breathe underwater.  After giving her a pair of earplugs, extras I had in my bag, I left her practicing her breathing.

I felt good about it and she was elated.

"I am in menopause and I'm only 49," said another woman I know in the locker room.  "I cry at the drop-of-a-hat," she added.  "Hey, get yourself on the estrogen patch," I advised. "It'll all be a bad memory."

Later, I bumped again into Tom Jackson, the native Canadian actor.  "Yes, I remember you," he said, as he shook my hand.  "We had our picture taken by the elevator."  I was dumbfounded he remembered, but I didn't have the nerve to ask for another.  Also forgot, for the second time, to tell him my great-grandmother was a Mohawk from the Tyendinaga Reserve at Desoronto, Ont.  Might have given me a tad of credibility.

He is such a charming gentleman.