Lena Wiles wasn't paying attention in the pool. The 10-year-old was too busy giggling at me.

Ellis Berend, 10, asked if she could show me a few of the moves in her swimming routine.

Leigha Wachfer, 8, wanted to show me a few tricks, too.

Trouble was, when Wachfer tried, she promptly sank toward the bottom, only to be hooked by Katherine Green -- an 18-year-old champion synchronized swimmer and member of the U.S. Junior National Team -- and dragged back to the surface.

Green is an instructor with Indy Synchro, the city's first and most successful synchronized swimming club. And the Near Eastside native was kind enough to let me join in one of her beginner lessons, this time involving a trio of prepubescent girls.

I was about to be schooled in the chlorinated equivalent of figure skating. I felt like Chaz Michael Michaels. This was the deep end of the pool, literally and figuratively.

"OK, girls," said Green, "let's do two laps for a warm-up."

Green has been swimming since she was 6. She followed her sister into synchronized swimming before really diving into the sport as a young teen. When in competitive form, she trains five times a week, and when she was on the national team last summer, it was six days a week for 11 hours a day.

"Girls," Green repeated. "Girls! Let's. Get. Going."

"OK," they moaned, plugged nostrils imbuing their little voices with a ducklike quality. They pushed off the wall, one by one, bobbing and splashing their way down the pool, dressed in floral and pink bathing suits, like technicolored ducklings in swim caps and goggles.

Green turned to me, in my yellow swim cap and black bike shorts, and did her best to impart the basics of synchronized swimming, such as how to tread water correctly (each leg spins in an independent circle going the opposite direction, like two conflicting helicopter blades). She showed me how to lie flat, how to tuck, and how to pop up. How to roll and tumble. How to swim while smiling.

"I really love performing," she said, demonstrating the advanced barracuda move. "And that's why I love synchro so much."

Moments later, when she wasn't watching, when I should have been listening, I whispered to the girls and asked if they love synchro, too. They said it was OK, but they didn't really like it at first. Neither did Green, as it turns out.

"I cried the whole first time," she said, "because I hated it."

But if big girls don't cry, then big boys certainly can't.

There are just a few men who compete nationally, said Green, including one who is close to being the best synchronized swimmer in the country. But he is the exception.

"It's just a more girly sport," Green explained. "Ballet, gymnastics, dance. Boys don't really seem that interested in that kind of thing."

Ahem! What about Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paul Hamm and Fred Astaire?

Combine them and it still wouldn't matter -- because no men are currently allowed to compete in synchronized swimming at the Olympic Games. The sport simply isn't big enough with the Y-chromosome crew.

Green herself is thinking about the Olympics, but the next step for the home-schooled middle child of nine siblings is to make the varsity team at Ohio State, which she attends in the fall. The summer games are a distant dream, perhaps in 2012, or 2016, and in the meantime she'll work on everything that makes synchronized swimming difficult.

"It takes a lot of body awareness and breath control," she said. "You have to be really in shape to endure a four-minute routine."

I looked myself up and down, explained how long it's been since I could touch my toes without feeling pain, and then I waited for Green to stop laughing.

"Don't give up," she said, "but it's kind of impossible to get things on the first try. If you need to go to the wall, go, because you can get really worn out from treading water."

Green coaches a lot -- including a group of ladies in their 60s -- and she looks like a professional, in a dark blue one-piece with USA emblazoned on it and reflective goggles that make you think of the Texas State Police. I had confidence in her ability to teach.

And I guess she had confidence in my ability to learn, because I was soon trying to memorize a 32-second routine (synchro swimmers plan routines based on counts of 8) that I would attempt to perform with my newfound friends.

Swim out on 1, breaststroke on 3 and 5 and 7. Lie flat on 1. Roll on 3. Tuck on 7. Turn 360 degrees 1 through 8. Lie flat on 1. Tuck on 3. Tumble on 5. Done.

"That's simple," cried the girls, breaking my heart. "That's easy!"

Right. Easy. With each stroke I surged forward, crashing headfirst into a 10-year-old body.

I forgot to smile when above water.

My lower half sank when I tried to stay flat, like a drowning human seesaw.

What I most enjoyed was our little circle swim at the end, the girls splishing as they bobbed up and down on the surface like seagulls, my splashing as I swayed back and forth like a buoy on an angry sea.

I held the hand of an 8-year-old with my left, and 18-year-old with my right, and we swam counterclockwise, a party of five, pretty and smiling and at play in the cool blue of the Natatorium.

Maybe I wasn't out of my depth after all.