I remember every single swimming pool I was ever in.
From being four years old with my dad in a pool while on vacation near Niagara Falls to being lit as a monkey while at a resort in Spain and deciding that a late-night dip, sans attire, was impossible to resist.
Birthday parties with a pool? Locked in the memory banks forever. The ritual serving of birthday cake was an interminable event as it meant we had to get out of the pool. Besides as we all now know, sneaking into the fridge later in the evening and furtively absconding with leftover cake and ice cream is way tastier.
The notable calm of swimming on an overcast summer morning. The weird feeling of going in the pool after school in the early weeks of September. All of it remembered.
It was a big deal when a pool showed up at my childhood home, as Dad was very much at home in a lake or river, both of which we lived close to. To him that water felt alive, whereas a pool not so much. In fact, I have almost no memories of my parents being in the pool other than hearing a thankfully rare snickering and giggling coming from the lights off, back ard, which instinctively we kids recognized as “shit we don’t need to see or hear” and closed our bedroom windows and thought of England.
In no time at all my brothers and I were catching all kinds of hell from Dad for being too rambunctious and ruining all his carefully crafted pH levels and wasting all the precious red-eye chlorine. My brothers and I respectfully gave his remonstrations all the due regard they deserved. We would be a little careful for at least a day. Then a little splash here, a bigger splash there and in no time at all, it was once again a joyous maelstrom.
No, to us that pool was a colosseum. An arena of testing yourself. Where with some neighbourhood buddies you could have marauding adventures. No scaredy cats allowed.
For example: We had this small baseball bat that we ingeniously figured out that if you threw it just right, it would shoot through the water like a torpedo and could go a surprising distance.
This escalated quite sensibly to trying nail each other with it. The delicious satisfaction of seeing your targeting extrapolation successfully reach the desperately evading quarry was … well … satisfying!
And until you’ve had a pissed off brother hunt you with a baseball bat, it is possible you haven’t yet explored all the avenues of thrills.
From the errant green algae pools with back swimmers to the seemingly exotic saltwater pools.
From first discovering the sacrilege, the crime that someone we knew hired a bulldozer to fill in a pool that they didn’t want, to sitting in a splash pool with my babies, I remember them all.
I, too, am a river and lake guy. But pools were and still are a liquid realm of time travel.
Enjoy yourselves.
Douglas Miller lives in Greater Sudbury. A rotating stable of community members share their thoughts on anything and everything, the only criteria being that it be thought-provoking. Got something on your mind to share with readers in Greater Sudbury? Climb aboard our Soapbox and have your say. Send material or pitches to [email protected].