As the weather heats up my mind turns to pools....not just pools of sweat, given that it so DANG HOT in Florida during these summer months, and we still try to turn on our A/C only when we really *need* to (it's off right now, despite it being 90+ today), but also to that quintessential summer place - the community public swimming pool.
You know, the place you went on hot summer days as a kid. The one to which you maybe now take your own children.
That place featured so vividly in the wonderful book & movie "Little Children" - where wordless seduction happened and the neighborhood pedophile showed up and scared everyone off (you know what I mean if you've read/seen it)...I'm telling you, this can be a dangerous place ya'll.
Even without the pale skinny guy in mask & flippers - who really wasn't menacing anyone at that moment - showing up & then later getting out of the now-emptied pool. "I was only trying to cool off!" he exclaims, upon exiting under the watchful eyes of the police. It's a great scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKRb2AeHyZA
I have this one specific childhood memory/story of being at a public swimming pool in Los Angeles (where my father grew up), 'round the tender age of 7 or 8. We were waiting to use the high-diving board and there was probably some kid-jostling and whatnot but at some point it apparently got ugly.
A tough little dark-haired boy I can still see in my mind's eye got angry for some inexplicable reason, and then said something like "you want me to show you my dick?! You wanna see my dick? I'll do it right now!" He seemed to be reaching into his swimming trunks and I was so confused & terrified...what the hell?! I definitely did NOT want to see his dick - I just wanted to use the high-dive!
Some other boy stepped between me and this angry little boy - I will never forget it - and I felt protected, grateful, safer. This other nicer boy subdued the rude boy, I guess, and that's where it ended.
At the time, I had no idea what the f--- was happening but now, all I can see is that in that bright L.A. sunshiny pool-day suddenly someone was angry, turning it all awful & using their genitals as some kind of weapon. As a young innocent girl I had to look away, and be afraid & protected by another boy. That really sucks, when I think about it. I wish I had just had the "balls" to put that little shit in his place myself. Chances are he's still an asshole. And today, I would tell him so.
David has his own story: he doesn't remember how it happened or what happened next, he just has this poignant image of a little girl - also 7 or 8 years old - whose bikini top strap had broken and she was crying because of it. He felt so BAD for her but also had NO idea what to do, and probably rightly intuiting that if he had tried doing anything to make it better he just would have made it worse (can you picture THAT scene? he would have gotten blamed for sure), he did nothing. But he remembers that little girl crying forlornly, with her bikini top held up against her chest with her little arms and no one coming to help her, to this day.
And don't get me started on WHY she was crying - maybe it was simply because she thought she'd get in trouble with her parents cuz of torn bathing suit OK, maybe, sure, but if it was because of some breasts she hadn't even begun to grow yet and certainly shouldn't have been ashamed to show, then just - wow - how messed up is that?!
Either way, these twin stories intrigue me, if only for how they dovetail so nicely. Two little girls being somehow shamed and afraid, at such a young age! about bodies that God made for us to use & enjoy. For me personally, I could easily turn my story into "boys-men are evil" - it certainly *felt* like that, at the time, just scary and icky.
If not for my knowledge since then, about such good good men that I love on this planet. If not for David, my sweet husband, who was a "sensitive guy" even back then by his own swimming pool story, even if he couldn't act on his convictions, and his sympathies.
I like to believe that he would have been that other boy standing up for me, in the line for the diving board, if he had been there in L.A. instead of growing up in Milwaukee (and also truthfully, if he hadn't been um, about 18 years old when I was 8). :)
I still believe in the good in people despite the shit we sometimes do to each other. So, I have to put it out to the general public - what's your swimming pool story? Share! And believe in the redemption of kind people and of summer, in all its glory.
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Man you're talented! Great read - I'm a fan, and will continue reading!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Kathryn! I appreciate the compliment and that you are reading...I still think of you & Alterra *sigh* those were the days right?
ReplyDeleteLove,
Michele
It's interesting that your memory of the pool is in L.A., because most of my pool memories have to do with visiting family in California as well. In Seattle it was mostly the lake - Madrona (learning to swim the length between 2 posts so we could swim out to the dock & use the diving board), the T-dock (wearing my first bikini and getting the worst sunburn ever)...and definitely Madison where I remember stealing cigarettes with Anna, Star and Sarah (forget her last name??) and smoking (possibly for the first time) the summer after 6th grade (and so my good-girl corruption began!).
ReplyDeleteFunny how so many of these memories are sort of "coming of age"...is it just because that's where we hung out in the summer so had the freedom to do silly growing-up things? And with that "freedom" of the parents letting their kids either run around the pool area, or take the bus to the beach - because they were oh so less protective than we are today - you get the good & the bad - the mean kids, the crushes, the worry about what our bodies looked like in a bathing suit, and definitely some good, growing up memories!
Oh Lisa, how I can identify - learning to swim the length between 2 posts so we could swim out to the dock & smoking cigs with people like Anna and Star! I sort of know where Star "is now" because of Alexa, not sure of Anna - but was in touch with her for awhile and she was there, strangely, in New Orleans in 2001 when I ran my marathon, I will never forget her for that, she ran the last couple miles with me, which really helped.
ReplyDeleteSummer can do crazy things to people, I think and it is about the extra freedom, at least when we were kids and our lives were circumscribed by the school year. Good memories (mostly). :) Thanks, as always, for reading!