Everybody Has a Swimming-Pool Story ~ Post-Script

As the weather continues to heat up here in Florida (which means "Flowery" or "Floral" in Spanish btw, see hyperlink below), and our A/C stays off sometimes, too much of the time to my mind but David loves the heat so...
http://www.ask.com/questions-about/What-Does-the-Word-Florida-Mean

My thoughts continue to turn to additional memories & stories of swimming pools. And how I have one now at our apartment, that I can go to anytime or at least on the weekends, and how I didn't even have to give up my "kingdom" for it! :) See last year's Mem.Day blog post ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html

The pressure is off to enjoy this swimming pool, cuz it's there all the time, and the pressure is off to enjoy a sunny day because they happen EVERY DAY here...I love it and it is SO different from what it was like to grow up in Seattle and also what I experienced during my not-so-brief 14 year tenure as a Wisconsinite.

I used to have this day-dream or fantasy as a kid, about getting an in-ground swimming pool (not one of those measly things I'd seen & been in, that were barely more than a very large blow-up kiddy pool), in our backyard, how one day I'd swim to the bottom and find a secret compartment.

I'd open it up & discover treasure and my family would be rich and safe and happy forever. We only needed the swimming pool to make it all happen!!! And they wondered why I wanted an in-ground swimming pool so badly. In cold rainy Seattle of all places. As a kid, I remember that I wanted this even more than my own room, far away from my snoring little sister (bless her heart, I think she had an adenoids problem).

I have another specific childhood memory of the swimming pool that wasn't - how my "rich" friend Merret had this HUGE backyard behind her family's HUGE mansion at the bottom of Capitol Hill, just past Broadway. Where I spent the night often and was so scared - how that house creaked and groaned, seemed to breathe, making just the weirdest noises, after dark when my friend was already asleep and I lay awake listening.

(Especially scared after reading that really great book Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan - see hyperlink below - which I probably placed in Merret's mansion in my mind).
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Dark-Hall-Lois-Duncan/dp/0440918057

This friend had the space & money for a swimming pool and I never understood why she didn't have one already. I probably nagged her, because it made no sense to me, but it never happened. She said she liked her soccer field's length of grass behind her house where we'd try out our one-handed cartwheels in warmer months & yes, kick the soccer ball about sometimes when bored. But to me it was a real no-brainer - perfect space for a swimming pool, helloooooo!?!

Later on, I had a "friend" for a milli-second, who had an actual swimming pool - I spent the night and I remember seeing it, partly covered with a tarp & strewn with leaves in her backyard, surrounded by a nice wooden deck. I think it was too cold to do more than gaze at it longingly, through the sliding glass doors....and I did, shamelessly.

This "friend" was Diana, brand-new to St.Joseph's Catholic grade school in 6th or 7th grade and we had at least one sleep-over at her modest house in Madison Park neighborhood, maybe two but then - like with exotic Carmela and athletic Jeannine before her - somehow I guess I did something wrong & was never asked back. (See previous post ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-swan-b-fast-club-popular-girls.html)

Besides, petite, blonde, with a little pert turned-up nose, impossibly cute Diana was already angling for entry to the popular girls' club and I just couldn't compete. Before I knew it she was gone - their magic circle opened up for the blink of an eye and then closed ranks around her, like an amoeba or jelly-fish consuming something.

I'm over the popular girls thing (at least I think I am, or should be for God's sake, as I approach 40), but not over the swimming pools, obviously. They are still magical to me and so I am still seeking others' swimming pool stories. Even my little sister had one (I'll let her tell it, it's about as *happy* as my LA pool story), so c'mon ya'll I know you have them too!