Kids and Pools

My buddy A.T. called me today. Today being Memorial Day, he was looking to get his two kids, Parker and Harry, into some water, and he found out their local water park closed down. He wanted to know if they could drop by and use my pool at my complex. I said sure. That's what Memorial Day is all about when you're a kid - a pool!

He and I visited by the pool while his kids did their thing, and he was stressed out most of the time because of the volume of his children, not wanting them to bother all the neighbors. I didn't want to interfere with his fathering lessons, but, for his own peace of mind, I quietly let him know that he really had nothing to worry about - my pool ALWAYS sounds like that when kids are out there. His kids were nowhere near the ruckus I normally hear coming through my window.

There is a truism about kids and pools - something about water makes kids LOUD. They have to scream everything. And inevitably, their civic-minded parents try in desperate vain to curb this law of nature, but it's a fool's errand. They're going to scream. They're going to have drama. They're going to be having the time of their lives one moment, and then bawling and shouting accusations at each other the next, ratting out their siblings and friends to the grown-ups for such crimes as pushing, splashing, hogging the ball or pool toy or air mattress, whatever. As I'm sitting here typing this, with A.T.'s kids having been gone for over an hour, I'm hearing the latest shift of young'ns to my right, screaming bloody murder, getting threatened with the worst punishment imaginable (having to get out), and using glass-shattering, piercing yells to make every point or simply call out for someone to watch whatever amazing feat they're going to attempt (jumping off the side, holding their breath for a really long time, etc).

The swimming pool is the natural habitat of the young. The wild, for them, if you will. In their homes and schools, they're domesticated, forced to follow society's stringent rules. In a pool, they are primordial. They are in their element. And while parents are commendable for trying to make them into better citizens through the process, they'd probably do their own blood pressure good just by sitting back and surrendering. There is a pool - and your monkey children are loose, and the party is ON.

I have loads of childhood memories of pools. I never had one of my own until my last year of high school, but your parents always manage to hunt down some kind of aquatic habitat for you when the summer months come - a more affluent family friend's home, a public pool, a water park that has all the frenzied chaotic feel of Chuck E. Cheese with water wings. Large bodies of water filled with chlorine and inflatable, floating distractions are just plain heaven for kids. They're places where kids discover exciting new stunts to perform. I remember my pride in standing on my head in shallow water. Or at hooking my legs over the edge and hanging upside down underwater while holding my nose. I remember having a lot of difficulty with pool the summer that I saw "Jaws" for the first time, constantly feeling the need to spin around and check behind me, sure I'd see a giant rubber shark coming to devour me.

Important lessons are learned in the pool. You develop a lot of social skills there, as you rarely have the pool to yourself, and have to deal with the foreign ways of other children. Many an argument broke out over the rules of such pool games as "Marco Polo". You learn to work with those who have a different worldview than the one you're being raised with. You also learn confidence. You always remember that first time you swam in the deep end, away from the safe and comforting feel of slick concrete beneath your toes. Your first dive, perhaps the most accurate metaphor for moving forward in life and facing new and unknown fears. Opening my eyes underwater, not using goggles, was a big problem for me. I was sure it was going to hurt me eyes a lot with all the chlorine. I resisted it for a long time. But I clearly recall the day when my father stood at the edge of the pool and told me to go underwater and do it. I whined and resisted, and he suddenly used that father voice and ordered me, sharply, to just do it. It had so much force behind it that I couldn't even imagine going under and faking it. I knew that voice too well. I dropped, opened my eyes, and found that it was, after all, something I could do. It took a parent making me push myself to make that important step.

Oh, and the drama of getting kids forced to get OUT of the pool. I just heard a whole slew of that (the neighbor kids have now gone in, and it's quiet out here again as the sun sets). The whining. The bargaining. The feeling of being so horribly wronged, forced by adults who don't understand to leave the cool, fun comfort of the pool and return to the indoor world of brushing teeth and finishing spinach. I feel, now, for my poor mother, as I can still see her standing there at the ladder of a public pool, tired and low on patience, trying to get me out, with me offering a compromise of "just going under one more time"...which then got amended to one MORE time... Poor Mom. Is this a birth thing? Are our bodies remembering the liquid, carefree peace of the womb, and our parents forcing us out of it into a cold, unpredictable world with all its clinging gravity and hard surfaces? The ease of floating carelessly is gone. Out in the world, all is heavy, all is work. And yet, if we don't leave it behind, we miss out on all that life has waiting for us out there. Plus, our skin gets all pruny.

My apartment is directly across from the pool, so either through the sliding glass of my bedroom, or from the open air of my patio, I hear all the screaming, the splashing, the anarchy. And you know what? It never bothers me a bit. There's something uplifting about hearing kids just being kids, being free and being themselves. Perhaps it's just a reminder of what those simple, less complicated days were like. Whatever it is, I welcome the din.

Marco Polo for all, I say.