A new emergency contact person?

Finding a responsible person to handle crisis can take some time

I was in a waiting room at the doctor’s office, completing the kind of forms I’d filled out countless times before: Name. Age. Address. Occupation. Emergency contact. I listed my sister Meg’s name and phone number in the latter spot. She’d been my emergency contact since I moved to Los Angeles a few years earlier. Of all the numbers in my cellphone, my sister’s was the only one I knew by heart, because I’d written it down on so many forms.

Later that night, it dawned on me that my emergency contact relationship with my sister was no longer reciprocal. Her new husband would be usurping my special place on all of her bureaucratic paperwork from here on out.

I decided to fire my sister and get myself an emergency contact who would emergencycontact me back. But I realized that my options were limited. I was 37. Most of my friends were married. Most of my family lived on the East Coast.

When you’re asking someone to be the person the authorities contact if your body washes up onshore and needs identifying, “maybe” doesn’t cut it.

I didn’t know anyone else in L.A. who wanted to swim in the ocean, and I couldn’t go by myself, because, as any child of the 1970s can tell you, a woman swimming alone is going to wind up getting eaten by a giant shark. That’s just science. I needed the ocean, now more than ever. Swimming in the ocean combated this spinster image I had of myself. I wasn’t sad, I was an adventuress!

I joined a Masters swim team, hoping to meet someone at the pool who would want to branch out into open water. It took nearly a year to find her. One morning, I heard the woman in the lane next to me tell her lane mate that she was training for the Malibu Triathlon and needed to start swimming in the ocean. I tapped her on the shoulder and said something smooth, like, “Oh my God, I’ve been looking for an ocean swimming buddy, I’ll swim with you!” She was younger than me by a few years, and with her back-of-the-neck tattoo and ease, she was just ... cooler. I felt my stomach drop as I watched her take me in and weigh possibilities ranging from “enthused eccentric” to “suspicious weirdo.” The scales must have tipped in my favour, she said, “OK. I’m Alicia.”

Alicia and I took to the seas. She was the better swimmer, but I was more comfortable with the surf.

We discovered that our shared enthusiasm extended past the ocean to include movies (we loved the entire Purge series); roadside attractions (Legend of Big Foot store); and travel. The ocean swimming buddy I had been searching for had become the emergency contact I needed.

Alicia and I see each other almost every week. We have built a tight network with about a half dozen swimmers.

Last month, Alicia got stung in the foot by a sting ray. She needed to get an X-ray. I convinced her to let me take her to urgent care. I just reminded her that was my job.