Day 172: The Pretty People At The Pool

Who are these pretty adult people laying poolside each day as I run by the apartment complex they live in over my lunch hour while getting a workout in? Good lord, it’s hard not to envy them, just lying there on those comfy looking lawn chairs, all oiled up and soaking in the rays. Man, what I wouldn’t give on some of those noontime runs to be able to just scale the fence, hop in that crystal-clear blue water for a few minutes, and then get out and resign myself into laying in one of those chairs for the next couple hours.

I’ve never given serious contemplation to having my own swimming pool, but if I had the means, it sure wouldn’t take much persuading for me to have one poured in my backyard. I could very easily see myself blissfully sitting poolside late into Sunday afternoons, leaving my chair only occasionally to flip the burgers on a nearby grill or refill my lemonade glass. I could easily see myself swimming laps late into July nights or just getting up from bed on those all-too frequent evenings when I can’t sleep and spend the hours in the far less appealing manner of staring at the bedroom ceiling. I don’t envy people who own their own swimming people exactly, but I sure wouldn’t mine trading places some days.

Back in the day, when I was a kid, swimming was the scene. No cable TV, no Internet, no video games, no whining allowed that there wasn’t anything to do. So you swam. And swimming was great. I could make the jaunt from my house to the city pool in about three or four minutes. Out the back door, I zipped through Uncle Gene’s backyard, up past the Amen’s, on along the edge of the Simpsons yard, and then all the way down the block to the Vandeman’s. There, I’d cut through their side yard, cross Kendall Drive, and sprint through another backyard to reach Wiggenhorn Park where the pool loomed. Barefoot and immune to pebbles and stickers and anything else sharp to my feet, I’d usually grab an apple or two from one of the trees along the way. I could make the trip even faster on my ole’ brown three-speed bike, though it didn’t have brakes and could prove a major hazard when coming to a stop.

These days, it seems every public pool has a skyscraper slide that the kids wait 5, 10, 15 minutes in line to go down for a ride that takes less than five seconds to finish. We had a high diving board and low diving board. I don’t remember the lines being excruciatingly long, although I do remember them being populated with a few of the same kind of knuckleheads I see today. Generally, though, the kids were cool, and I loved the fact that summer somehow made it possible for me to become better friends with kids I wasn’t as good of friends with during the school year.

I loved that pool—until I reached that age that seemingly every teenager does at some point, when swimming doesn’t seem cool anymore and the prospect of taking your shirt off in front of the opposite sex is more nerve racking than fun. Still, there was a time when my sister hit the pool every day at the opening whistle, went home for an hour to eat, and went back until the pool closed. I learned how to swim at that pool, but I arguably learned more valuable lessons from my friends out of the water.

I wonder how many of the “apartment swimmers” I see over my lunch hours actually do any swimming. I have a feeling they’re just fine tuning their tans. Whether they do swim or not, their existence sure looks tempting and appetizing through the chain link fence that separates us. What I wouldn’t give to feel that water and then lay down stomach first on the hot pavement afterward.