Safety in the deep end

I miss my pool.  I grew up in a lake community, thinking, of course, that it was WAY better then the pool.  The pool had  no docks to swim to, no sand, no sailboats...just boring clear water surrounded by boring hard cement.  I felt sorry for those people who had to go to a pool, getting blisters on their toes from the rough bottom, red chlorine eyes, green chlorine hair, heavy "I just drank half the pool full of chlorine" coughs.  Poor, forsaken pool-people.  

Then I moved to a place that didn't have lakes - if you wanted to submerge in water in public, you had to join a pool.  When a friend from playgroup invited us to go to her pool as guests, I didn't jump up and down.  Pool.  Whatever.  Yeah, I'll go.  But only because my Nemo sprinkler is on the fritz and he doesn't spin anymore. He just kind of leans to one side and spits  - one stream of water in the exact place my face is while I'm bent over holding my screeching toddler up, the other stream straight into the ground creating grassy mud that said toddler NEEDS to sit in. 

The first time I sat myself in the baby pool I believe I actually got light headed.  Thank god the pool was only a foot and a half deep and I was resting comfortable against the side because the shock was overwhelming.  I...was...a......pool-person.  How quickly the might fall.  I flipped faster than a crab on the deck of a ship on the Deadliest Catch.  Where had it been all my life? 

How could my parents have failed me all those years?  I grew up eating pb&j sandwiches laced with sand every summer.  We swam with the constant threat of snapping turtles lurking just beyond the ropes - never questioning why they respected the rope boundary - did we have some kind of treaty with them?  I wouldn't swim within ten feet of those ropes - I swear the water was colder over there - and anyone who did was either brave or stupid.  Mainly stupid.  Those docks were painted with some kind of glossy white paint that was mixed with sand so you wouldn't slip and crack your head open.  Of course, you always did slip and you ended up with an extremely painful sandpaper rash, (think road rash) and then had to, gasp, swim back to the beach trailing blood, and we all know what that attracts.  Sharks. 

(If you grew up in the era of Jaw's, you know what I'm talking about.  Heart stopping fear. Bleeding in open water is like putting a target on your legs, you will be eaten by a shark.  The best you can hope for is that the lifeguards are watching and would at least blow the whistle and yell "SHARK! SHARK! if they saw a fin because God knows your friends aren't swimming near you, they "swam ahead to let your mom know your hurt".)  

I digress.

The beach lifeguard (at least where I grew-up) would dole out punishment for those who didn't obey.  If, for example, you where caught climbing up the end of the slide (which was made of metal, by the way, so by noon on a sunny day you were likely to incur 2nd degree burns by the time you reached the bottom) you would be called in to the lifeguard stand if.  Your punishment would be to pick-up 25 cigarette butts off the beach.  If you had a bad reputation (and your mom wasn't at the beach), it would be more like 100.  It was a time when all the moms would sit in their low sand chairs, lined up in a half circle around the kids, wearing big sunglasses and baby oil, doling out pb&j sandwiches, smoking, and drinking TAB.  Of course, who needs and ashtray when your sitting in all that sand.  So, on a crowded day, kids would be getting in trouble all over the place because, hey, someone had to clean up the beach.

And so now it has come full circle.  I am in New England now - lake country.  I will now subject my children to the same perils I faced.  I will send them out into that freezing lake water and listen to them complain about sand in their bathing suits.  I will make them climb into the hot car - sandy, wet, and tired.  I will make them rinse the sand off in the freezing water from the hose in front of the house so they don't bring it inside. 

More importantly, I will no longer be able to sit right next to the deep water, thus keeping my standing-upright-in-my-bathing-suit time to a minimum.  I now have to walk my not-really-suitable-for public-viewing legs all the way across the sand and into the painfully-slow-deepening water.  I do believe I'll just bring a misting bottle to the beach and put my kids in life vests.