Pool Stories

With my wife out of town, I have time for a second post this week. Plus, I have something that's "bloggable." Kudos to Tom/Leah for that word.

So Mark and I are talking about the Olympics, specifically how some events are quite boring. You know, any event that has judging instead of a "real" winner. Those judges from East Germany were soooo picky! Far too subjective based on emotions and bad pizza for lunch. After strolling down memory lane, we relived the day when Greg Louganis cracked his head on the diving board. Mmmmmmm, that'll leave a mark.

Now my pool memories are only from child hood. Sorry, Susan, but my adult pool stories don't consist of laying out (which I hate also because you get so hot!) but rather supervising Harrison. Typically it's me and the moms trying to keep our kids from swalling too much water.

But the topic came up with Mark regarding our childhood days at the pool ... specifically the diving board. Now after watching Greg's melon split open like a can of tomato sauce, as I child I really had no desire to get brave on the diving board or try out Rodney Dangerfield's Triple Lindy. I had enough red body parts after dives gone bad. So I never felt the need to try flips because of the visual and audio (have you ever heard a man's head hit a diving board?) memory of that one event.

So my creativity was often limited to - bum, bum, bum, boing, CAN OPENER! Come up for air, look at the lifeguard to see if I'm in trouble (the whistle may have blown when I was under water!), and then swim to the edge. Okay, so I was trying to splash the life guard with my can opener, thus the guilty conscience. But my cool points were never as high as pool guy who did a triple flip, double twist gaynor (is there a correct spelling of that word?) from the low dive. But hey, have you ever heard a man's head hit a diving board? So I'd mix in the cannonball, intentional belly flop, toothpick, "dive and touch the bottom" ... or an assortment of others with names not repeated publicly. I also never felt the need to do a handstand on the diving board, hold that position for ten seconds, and then fall into the water ... with no splash. Like it would have won me a free snack during the next adult swim?

A few other memories from the pool ... obviously the hot tub. ERRRRRR, kiddie pool as they called it. Then the week at Tomahawk pool when there was a mysterious brown substance at the bottom of the pool in the 3 foot section. No idea why that didn't get cleaned up sooner than a week. It was obviously dirt, right?

Then the day when I determined that I was definitely over 4 feet tall ... because when I stood RIGHT NEXT to the sign that said the water was four feet deep my head stuck out a bit.

Or the times when, while playing catch in the pool with the nerf ball (diving catches were the goal - as cool points went way up then) Jason would intentionally throw the nerf ball at one of the moms. I would then have to go get it and apologize for his "bad" throw. If you've ever seen a wet ball hit a woman in the face, they're not smiling afterwards.

So we weren't studying Talmud growing up, but they were good times.