Tonight I did what I do most evenings in the summer time. I swam laps in our neighborhood pool.

Usually I go in the late evening and I try to avoid the crowds and the swim team. Tonight I swam over to catch a lap lane and started swimming only to have a young white boy tell me that it was a one person lane.

I replied,”Usually people share the lanes.”

He continued, “It is a one person lane.”

I kept swimming and did a full lap in “his” lane. Then I moved over to outside the lap lanes and asked a sweet Indian woman if it would bother her if I swam where her and her two young daughters were swimming. She said, “It was fine”, and flashed me a beautiful smile.

As I continued to swim I noticed the white kid wasn’t swimming. So I asked him “Are you going to swim?”

He said, “Yes”.

I said, “Well I haven’t seen you swim any yet, so if you are going to swim then get to it okay?”

Then his older sister got in the fray and yelled at me when I was turning around telling me I could have her little brother’s lane. I said, “No, you wanted it, it is yours.”

Then they both sat on the side of the pool where I was trying to turn around and kept taunting me so finally I got the lifeguard involved and they were informed as to how people actually share a lane.

They shared that one lane for a little while and by that time I had moved into the other lap lane with an Oriental man who was more than willing to share.

I had never been so embarrassed to be white. Obviously these kids were raised to think that they were entitled to more than others. It was annoying to say the least.

The icing on top of the cake was that by the end of my laps I was swimming again with the rude little white kid. I made sure I was nice to him before I left the pool, something about putting coals of fire upon his head just struck me as being the right thing to do to him.