Pool Time!

              Memorial Day has come and gone.  The day we honor our war veterans and our fallen heroes by eating hot dogs and hamburgers outside and buying crap we don’t need at reduced prices. But this day is more than saying how much we value those people who made the ultimate sacrifice and display that appreciation by sleeping late and drinking too much. No, today is the day that…dum dum dummmm….the pool opens!

              There I sit, on our front porch at our home in the Badwater Basin of Death Valley.  I’m sipping my hot tea, which was iced tea not three second prior, and I’m enjoying watching rocks melt and birds bursting into flame. My daughter runs up to me and my wife and communicates her desire to travel to the local pool and engage in communal enjoyment of a containment unit housing large quantities of hydrogen and half as many portions of oxygen.  I know this because she yells…”Pool Time!”

              My wife and I don our respective swimsuits and our daughter gets hers on…backwards, but still a good try.  We quickly fix the fashion faux pas, and we pack plenty of water and snacks, which is a little strange as we are only planning on being there for three hours or so. But then my mind harkens back to Gilligan’s Island and their “three hour” tour and decide the more we pack the better.

              We are now sitting on metal chairs with those blue vinyl straps that immediately stick to the skin of your back and create that ever popular “phhhpt” sound that everyone hears…and judges…when you get up.  I’m sitting under an umbrella because my skin is so fare that one time someone aimed a flashlight in my general direction and I developed a severe sunburn from the light generated by two “C” batteries.  

              I have my ear buds in my ears…mostly because putting them anywhere else on my body would be both illogical and inappropriate…and I’m listening to a sports radio station talk about the local Death Valley High School teams (Go Scorpions!).  My wife and her girlfriends have gathered into circle and appear to be plotting the deaths of their respective husbands, but it’s hot so who cares?  All the men…married men, that is…have ear buds on and are trying to do what we do best, namely sleep or zone in and out of conversations just long enough to hear our names.

              The kids are playing in the pool and some of the younger ones have…that smile, that rather strenuous and concentrating smile…you know the one, parents…followed by a slow and methodical exit from the pool. About that time the lifeguards, who appear to have been born just last week, blow the whistle and allow the adults to swim without the kids.  Based on the “smiles” I’ve seen, however, I’ll pass.

              Our daughter comes to and from the pool for frequent re-application of sunscreen spray, and the spraying somehow always seems to drift in my direction and into my eyes. I’m sure there is a scientific reason behind it, but I just can’t seem to come up with one.  After a couple of hours, it’s time to come home and out of the sun.  

              We lug all the supplies back into the house.  The moment we get inside, our eyes begin to adjust to the reduced lighting and the dog signifies his recognition that we are home by jumping up on my and scraping my now sunburned legs.  Ah, yes.  Hurray for Pool Time! 

All I know is that this darned Noxzema had better…

Be Good or Be Good At It!

Oh, one more thing...a picture to enhance your summer pool swimming pleasure...enjoy!

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