It’s 9:56am at the entrance to the public swimming pool and the morning fog is still burning off, making it a cool 62 degrees as my sister Sharon and I emerge from Mom’s light blue Thunderbird in our bathing suits with one towel and $1 each to wait for the swim center doors to open at 10am. We are here to hang all day with Mom’s friend Terry’s four kids Ally, Morgan, Eddie, and Tommy, who are just pulling into the parking lot next to us, while our moms go somewhere together, kid-free.
Ally is my age, nine, and athletic, which I am not. Morgan is my sister’s age, seven but my sister doesn’t love to hang out with her. Eddie is four and is supposed to stay in the kiddie pool. Tommy is 11 and you can tell he doesn’t want to be here at all with a bunch of little kids. A line of various-aged kids has formed at the door, but Sharon and I don’t know any of them because we go to a one-room school out in the country where I’m the only one in my grade and there are only three other kids in hers. The door to the pool opens and we file in, paying our $.50 child admissions in wrinkled cash or coins. Tommy immediately leaves us behind to hang out with someone from his school in town instead.
The rest of us head to the lawn where we toss our towels on the grass, pull off our saltwater sandals, and head to the pool. Eddie runs off; Sharon and Morgan sit on the edge of the kiddie pool, their feet dangling in; Ally takes a running jump into the six-foot-deep section of the big pool; and I dip a toe into the shallow end of the big pool, inching my way into the freezing water.
Two hours later, the four of us girls all emerge from the water, heavy and dripping wet, our feet blistering on the burning concrete as we race to the grass, which is a minefield of bees, and back to our bath towels from home. We have no food, water, sunscreen, or hats. There is a drinking fountain, after all, and if we really need it, there’s some shade at the fence or by the cinderblock shower building, which we had to walk through to get to the pool. Otherwise, it’s just us, our towels, and the saltwater sandals we came in with, which we now put back on our water-pruned feet to stand in line on the asphalt by the snack bar.
There we start to strategize our snacks. We have 50 cents each left from the original dollar we began with so that limits our options right away. While in line with other bathing-suited kids, a discussion begins about the merits of the various kinds of candy within our budget. After a lengthy internal deliberation, I finally decide to buy the same thing I always buy — Wacky Wafers, maxing out at 50 cents. Sharon, as usual, wants a grape soda, also 50 cents, Ally wants a Charleston chew (frozen) also 50 cents, and Morgan is not telling us what she is buying. Tommy is off somewhere with bigger kids and we have no idea where Eddie is, but there’s no way out of the pool area, so we figure he’s here somewhere.
The line is not too long but time seems to slow down in the sizzling sun as we wait in the heat. We finally arrive at the green-painted, peeling wooden snack bar counter, and order our snacks from a suntanned teenage boy in a blue visor with two little feet embroidered on the side, which we knew was the “hang ten” logo. When I receive my wacky wafers, I rip them open on the spot, while Ally is still paying for her Charleston Chew.
For some reason, banana flavor is my favorite of the Wacky Wafers. Maybe because it’s so true to the taste of a banana. I never understand cherry flavor though, it always seems like the main flavor, the first one everyone likes, and it tastes like cherry flavor, but never like an actual cherry. We soon realize Morgan has used not only her own but Eddie’s money to buy herself a $1.00 hot dog but there’s nothing we can do about it.
Now we aren’t sure how long to wait after eating before going back in the water. We thought we heard somewhere that you are supposed to wait. Morgan heads right to the pool.
“You’re supposed to wait,” Sharon, always proper, admonishes, “Or you could get a cramp and drown.”
“That’s bullshit.” answers seven-year-old Morgan, and heads to the water anyway. My sister shrugs and sips on her soda.
So Ally, Sharon and I wait for what we think might be a half hour. That should be enough, we reason. Then, we head over to the big pool, first scanning the little pool, where there is still no sign of Eddie. But on our way past the lifeguard — who is another teenage boy in a high chair by the side of the pool wearing tight red shorts, no shirt, and a visor that says “lifeguard”— Eddie walks up to us, asking for something to eat.
“Sorry, Morgan ate your food,” Ally says to him. Eddie starts screaming.
“Let’s get some water,” Ally says, grabbing his hand. Dragging him along, we all reverse course and walk to the other side of the pool, where we line up to take a drink out of the drinking fountain that is shaped like a huge lion with its mouth open and you have to put your head inside the lion’s enormous, teeth-lined jaws to take a drink.
I always feel a little tentative leaning my head into the lion’s mouth, but amazingly, Eddy has no problem with this. After his drink, he starts running again to the kiddie pool. “No running!” Ally shouts, pointing to the stenciled letters on the ground next to us that literally say ‘No running”. He keeps going, and, as if on cue, trips and facedives onto the concrete. We all stop and watch him to see what happens. Eddie slowly gets up — his knees, chin, and forehead streaming blood — looks around, then runs on to the kiddie pool, jumping into the water, where small red swirls of threadlike blood encircle him and the other kids for a few seconds before dissipating into the blue, chlorinated pool.
We all laugh for about five minutes.
“I’m going to play tea party now,” announces Sharon, finally disgusted with all the shenanigans, and she walks away, jumping into the three-foot section of the big pool to find other random girls to play tea party with.
Ally and I go over to the diving boards, which are a terror to me but for some reason I love to do it anyway. Ally is already fearlessly climbing the ladder to the high dive, just going for it. I’ve done the high dive before, and it was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life because I actually touched the bottom of the twelve-foot deep end of the pool.
Now, I walk slowly to the edge of the low dive and I’m scared and I’m also certain everyone is watching me out there alone above the surface of the pool. I jump with my eyes closed, and open them underwater — I’m submerging in a cloud of bubbles, fast, and it’s always freaky, because you go further under the water than you ever do when you are swimming or even jumping off the edge. ‘If I can just hold my breath long enough, I’ll be ok,’ I think calmly. Finally, I bob up, exhilarated, and swim to the side of the pool. No one is looking at me — not even the lifeguard.
Finally the pool is closing and we are pretty tanned. We find Eddie in a corner of the big pool, sort-of playing Marco Polo with some six-year-olds. Tommy is waiting for us at the shower building door. We wrap our towels around our waists and walk the five blocks to the front of the Library where we wait another hour for our moms to pick us up.