My favorite element is chlorine

It is. Why chlorine? Why not something vitally necessary like carbon or fun to play with like nitrogen or sodium? I'll tell you why. We'll just go ahead and start at the tender age of 14ish and my freshman year of high school (we could start earlier, but the numbers are easier this way).

Every morning (except Sunday) I would rise early, often before the sun (it's not morning until the sun's up, btw) and haul my tired buns into the car and 3.5 minutes down the road to the pool for a two hour workout with my high school (or in the summer, club) swim team before school. Every day after school and homework I would haul my somewhat less tired buns once more to the pool for the "real" workout with my club team. Weekends were often spent at swim meets, and summers were spent at swim practice, teaching swimming lessons, or lifeguarding. And despite showers after each practice, my skin retained that unique chlorine-y perfume even when dry!

So let's do some math. 4 hours of practice 5 days per week, plus 2 more hours on non-meet weekends. That's 22 hours per regular week. We'll go ahead and kick it up to 35 if it happened to be a meet weekend. Let's multiply those 22 hours per week by 36 weeks in a school year. We get 792 hours per school year, times four years gets us 3,168 hours! That's not including entire weekends camped out on the pool decks of steamy natatoriums at meets, or summers, or the 4.5 years I spent playing water polo in college.

Some things just become a part of you.

So tonight as I was stressing about the rain and its continuing invasion of my basement, I found my self cleaning the bathroom as a distraction. No sooner had I squeezed the trigger on my chlorine bleach-based cleaner than I felt my nerves unclench and the furrows in my brow smooth out. I breathed in the chlorine and it felt comfortable and relaxing. (Don't worry, I'm not going to start huffing harsh cleaning chemicals)

But some things just become a part of you.