In the Swim

I took the boys to the public pool this afternoon once the friggin' rain stopped. It's very nice, as far as public pools go - high dives, a couple of pretty cool slides, and a lily pad type thing that seems to appeal to all ages, although it's designed for the toddler set. When the kids were younger we hung out a lot at the zero depth area with the fountains, since, in theory, they couldn't drown. Not easily anyway. Now that they're older they pretty much leave me in the dust and head out for whatever action they can find. There's usually plenty to choose from, since the pool is one of the major kid hangouts around once it opens Memorial Day weekend each year.

Public pools are weird for me anyway, since, being a SoCal kid, backyard pools are the way to go. It's part of the LA experience to just walk out of the house and fall into the pool. (That didn't sound right, but you know what I mean). My favorite thing has always been to be in a completely unlit pool at night, preferably alone, and just float around looking at the stars. My kids, of course, are completely convinced I'm going to be eaten by a shark whenever I do this, and no argument I can make wins them over. This will undoubtably be the way I make the Guiness Book of World Records, by being eaten by a Great White in a private swimming pool. In the foothills. You know, you want kids with imagination and then when they get all wacky you regret even wishing for it. I thought once we got over the hungry shark in the toilet theory we were done. Evidently not.

So once my kids desert me I'm pretty much on my own. Sometimes I meet friends. Sometimes I bring a book or my iPod. I have been known to nap from time to time. But today I just people watched, which is my favorite thing of all. In a college town, especially an in your face liberal college town, there's always something fun to see. I have seen piercings that were incompatible with my lunch and moms nursing babies where the kid's face blended beautifully into the whole boob tattoo. We may be solidly in the Midwest, but it's not boring, let me tell you.

Today the major attraction was a bunch of testosterone driven high schoolers who were having, so help me god, a spitting contest. To snag the girl? This makes perfect sense, since all women know that nothing is as big an aphrodisiac as a bunch of spitting men. Or in this case boys. I have a particularly hard time with this, since I find spitting to be absolutely vile. For all of the truly disgusting things I see at work, nothing grosses me out worse than spit. And without going into details, I've seen some really gross things. But the thing that undid me had to do with spit, and it had nothing to do with nursing. Once, in Alabama, I picked up a two liter almost full bottle of what I thought was Coke, only to realize that it was the container my cousin was using as a spitoon for his chewing tobacco. Sweet Jesus, I have flashbacks to this day. And they all came back watching these morons, who, amazingly, never did get a girl to come within twenty feet of them. Poor things were so confused by the lack of attention that it gave me quite a chuckle.

That is, once I stopped dry heaving.