Cruel Summer

When I was a little Writinggal, I was so insanely jealous of kids who had pools in their backyards. Our next door neighbors “the kids”  had one. The dorky guy down the street had one. And the girl on the next street over who was my age but looked like she was 16? She had one too.

But here’s the thing with kids and pools: If you own a pool, you’re kinda sick of it. Sure, at first you swim in it every day but just like any other new toy, you get bored. Well, us kids without a pool were never bored of the idea. I wanted to go swimming in one of those pools every day during the summer. But the pool-kids were so stingy with them!

The rule was that I could never ask to go in their pools. I had to be invited. Oh, it was so hard to not even drop hints: “Boy, it sure is hot outside. Have you noticed that? If only there was a way we could cool off…and also jump from some sort of board into some water…”

One day I was walking down the street in our neighborhood with one of my friends. The dad of the girl who always looked like a teenager came out and said, “Hi! Would you girls like to go for a swim?”

“YES!” we both replied and before I could even turn to dart home and get my suit, towel (and permission from my mom, of course), this jerk said, “I bet you would!” The fact that I still remember that means it left a big mark of disappointment on me. (That, and I have a pretty awesome memory.)

“The kids” next door were no better. I could hear them splashing and playing through out adjoining fences and I longed to escape my backyard full of grass and go to their oddly-landscaped yard, featuring big ceramic shoes with plants growing out of them.

Dorky dude was the worst. I never once swam in his pool. Come to think of it, though, he was a little pudgy so maybe he was embarrassed to be seen in swimwear. Forgivable.

If one day I have a pool in my backyard, I’m going to invite all the neighbor kids so come swim in it. But really, there’s that whole liability issue and all the work involved in keeping up with the pool and my own kids would probably get bored of it quickly. I think I’ll just let them be kids who beg other kids to let them swim in their pools. It will be a good learning experience for them. Give ‘em something to write about one day.

And now (since I’m still excited about this new feature where I can insert maps into blogs), I’ll show you Friendswood, Texas, where all of this took place. See? down there just south of Houston. From here it looks so close to the ocean I don’t know why I cared about pools!