More Summer Madness: Underwater Radios

Lorraine: “Just finished ordering from healthquick.com. The glucosamine and chondroitin under the name Pain Free was $16.99 for 150, Schiff. I pay around $26 for the same thing at Costco, our discount store. It’s much more at the health food store. You paid for this month’s on-line cost.”

Plus, you get $15 off your first order. Soon, your whole computer will be paid for.

And now this:

Some of you will recall my quest for submarine sonnatas, or “all news, all the time, underwater.” Didn’t work out. Now comes this from a man whose middle name is Money. I would fully expect to be rich just from being his pal. So far: no luck. But he knows everything about everything, and offers this about underwater radios:

“None of the ones that attach to your head work. They are just annoying and get wet. You have to get one that you submerge in the pool. I will bet you can probably do it with a cheap portable and one of those watertight bags that scuba divers use. (Do not try it with a 110-volt radio, thank you very much.) Sound really travels in water. Just ask a shark.”

I can’t quite picture how this would work, but I think I’ve come up with an alternative. To keep the laps from becoming too boring, I will think. Really — I have lots to think about. I just have not thought about it while swimming, for fear of losing count. I need hardly tell you that keeping count of the laps, and getting credit for every last one of them, is something even more fundamental to swimming than goggles. I count by two and fours and tens, I count forward and backward; when I get to a period of history with which I am familiar — nineteen twenty-nine, nineteen thirty, nineteen thirty-one — I try to think of some event or who was president. But if I actually think about a problem or a project, I’m sunk.

Well, I am now informed there’s some kind of lap-counting device you attach to your finger and click as you make each turn, with a read-out to tell you the score. Clicking at the turn is something I ought to be able to get into the habit of doing without thinking, so if I can locate one of these things, and it works, I’ll be able to turn my attention to the age-old questions (two of which, regarding falling trees in the forest and chickens in eggs, I believe I dispatched August 9). All I will need then is an underwater pad and pen, to jot notes before I forget. I know Jerry’s pen writes upside down — the one he got from that guy at Boca Vista Estates who got it from an astronaut. But could it write under water? And has Kramerica Industries begun work on an underwater pad yet? (New Yorkers: as I write this it is nearly 11pm. Time for Seinfeld. Good night.)