Friday, June 25, 2004
Everybody Out Of The Pool!
A friend of mine wrote me an email discussing some things her family would do if they won the 155 million dollar lottery and it got me to thinking about what I would do if I won. It then occurred to me that almost everything I would like to do are things I was able to enjoy as a child.
One such activity is swimming. I spent my summer holidays in the water as long as I was allowed. Every single day I would go down to the town pool and meet up with my friends to dive off the boards, try new stunts, see who could hold their breath the longest, (which I almost always won even if it required pain and that heaving in my chest as the body desperately searched for a gulp of oxygen because I was so competitive), holding underwater “tea parties� and doing lap after lap after lap.
I never did get enough swim time in because I am very fair skinned and burn extraordinarily easily so my mother only allowed me to be there for 2 hours a day before I had to come home and sit inside, away from the charring rays of the sun. If I wasn’t at the pool goofing off, being a kid and fully relishing my summer vacation away from school, I was on the swim team and at swim meets or I was out at the river or on a boat on the lake, water skiing. It used to be joked that I should have been a fish.
However, one incident has kept me from pools since I was about 13 or 14 years old. I was down at the pool, having a grand time, when the life guard blew the whistle. This indicated it was time for everyone to get out of the pool so the guard could take a break. We knew the timing of these breaks so this particular day, when the whistle blew and it wasn’t standard break time, we were a little slow coming out; confused at this break in tradition.
Eventually we were all out, wrapped up in our towels, standing at the edges of the pool, heads tilted in curiosity. We saw the life guard walk into the office and emerge about 30 seconds later with a long net on a stick. We scratched our heads in wonder as we watched him walk over to the kiddy section of the pool and dip the net into the water.
It was at this time that we all learned what had happened and a collective groan and “Eeeeeewwww!� escaped our lips. Apparently someone’s kid brother had pooped in the pool and the life guard was fishing it out. I know you’ve all seen the movie. It does indeed look like a Baby Ruth’s candy bar, the image rippling and sending chills up our spines.
“We might have touched that!�
“We weren’t even in the kiddie end. Don’t be stupid.�
“Well it might have floated over to us!�
Another group, “Eeeeewwww!�
Of course it didn’t float. It had promptly settled at the bottom of the pool and had only moved slightly in the child created currents.
“You know it could have broken apart and pieces of poo could have landed on us!�
“Gross! There’s little tiny poo fragments all over the pool now!�
“How many times have you opened your mouth underwater?! You could have eaten some of the poo and not even know it!�
“Eeeeewwww!�
The lifeguard collected the poo in the net and then flung it over the side of the fence into the field surrounding the swimming pool and each and every child vowed they would never walk on that side of the pool ever again.
Then the guard blew the whistle three short times letting us know we could all jump back into the pool if we so desired. Some kids sailed right in but a lot of kids opted to sit out for awhile and contemplate which was worse: being touched by poo or never swimming in the pool again.
Eventually almost every one was back in the pool. However, I was not one of them. As much as I loved swimming, I could not get the image out of my head of a small, brown, broken off chunk from the mother ship, floating around in the depths of the pool and finding it somehow landed inside my mouth. That was it for me. I never went back to that pool ever again. In fact, I have not been in a public pool since, save the one time in the Army when we learned how to keep ourselves from drowning should we ever find ourselves in a large body of water with all our gear on. Other than that, no public pool for me.
But I still love to swim very much and I really miss doing so. Therefore, if I were to ever come into a lot of money, I would have two pools. One inside pool so I could swim all day long, every day without fear of sunburn and one outside because a true swimming pool experience is in an outside pool.
And if anyone ever uses my pool for a toilet, they will drain it themselves, scrub it down, refill it and pay for that entire process out of their pocket. When I was younger and in Brownies, we went to a girl’s house to swim and the mother warned us all that if we peed in the pool, the water would turn a different shade around us because of a dye they had put in. To this day I have no idea if that’s true or not but if it is out there, I will find it or I will make it. Or maybe I just won’t let anyone swim in my pool if they can’t control their bodily functions.
Anyway, that would be the first thing on my list of, “What I Would Do If I Won A Lot Of Money�. What would be the very first thing you would do? And make it exciting. If you have all that money coming to you, bills will get paid so do them second.
