Pool Break

Ah, kids break at the pool, just adult swim or lounging in the heat on floats or treading water. Fifteen minutes of kids resting on the side. I hate to think of why this was started. Thirty plus years ago, in another steamy summer when the pool population grew to over three hundred a day, a seven year old girl drowned and no one noticed. Ever since, the pool has pool breaks.

Those numbers of the late eighties, early nineties seem never to be replicated. Those numbers made the front page of the newspaper. I was even in the corner of a photo. That was the day before the girl died. I couldn't imagine letting my five year old out of my sight or anything of that day I missed being at the pool.

Now when senior citizens seem to outnumber the children at four o'clock in the afternoon, the pool check's origins lost. The lifeguards now, half the age of how long ago that happened. The pool hasn't had such an incident since. I wonder if they are told in training why they must clear the pool of kids.

I entered the pool yesterday as a mother complained, leaving, "I want to be here by myself."

It happens before you know it, I thought, remembering how I did long to just swim. Sometimes moms and I traded time with no kids, for a quick swim in the deep end, with an adventuresome dive off the board. You could choose between the high board and regular board, then. It was a guilty pleasure, even though it was also a trade.

A few years ago, I noticed a growing number of seniors with the gray hair collecting in the corner of the middle deep end. We exchanged names, schools we graduated from and occasionally the years. When I came home Saturday, I told my husband, there were more adults than kids that day. He laughed in close incredulity. "No, really." We're not our parents.

Yesterday, I moved around. Even with adults, to actually swim, you chance bumping into people. I don't want to do that. With getting over a summer cold thing, the pressure on my head annoys me as well. So I have doggy paddle, swim backwards or sideways. This moment, I water walked. Always keeping my head above water, so I can hear and see conversations.

Five men in a circle talking. I heard "Cleveland," then "Blossom and Ridgefield. One is outside." Big names of concerts they saw there. Like I did in the water, the topic drifted slightly to Youngstown and the concert venues there in the sixties, seventies. "The Tomorrow Club" and "oh and the Angora- yes, the Angora." "Round tables." I floated away to check the clock and slowly returned.

"Southside Johnny," I overheard, then muffled as I hadn't closed in. I tried. I'm giving the thumbs up. Saying, "Yes."

Bruce Springsteen drifted into the conversation. Something about Southside Johnny's voice. Personally, I thought Johnny's was better. Another man said something about Clarence Clemmons helping. "He died of a stroke?"

By the time I got close enough, Stevie Van Zandt's name was dropped. "What about him going from singing to The Sopranos." His pompadour commented on. "Did he look the part?" I swam around. Looking back I noticed a younger man get politely ousted from this group.

He looked to be in his thirties or forties. Someone asked, "How old are you?" I didn't hear the answer, only that he moved away.

I thought how I would have loved to talk about the concerts, the venues, the musicians and singers. Music, history and personalities interest me. Yet, I am a woman and didn't want to join in because of that unwritten rule. Some days, I will talk to anyone. As a home health nurse, I had to, so I learned to speak on most subjects and listen. But there is that hidden rule, don't mix with men, especially when wearing a bathing suit.

I thought, even like with that young man, sex, age, social status separate us. And sometimes, even when I speak like a human, with a man, it turns into a "pick up." Flash my wedding and engagement rings, talk about my father and father-in-law being in the Army Air Corps, mention my husband, several times, in various roles, as a submariner, as a contractor at an Army Depot, working on railroad cars, the man will still somehow stroke his ego that he can pick me up. "Uh, no. Just be a human." No exchange of phone numbers. I don't want them to even know my author information.

I mourn, too, today, many interesting people slip away because I won't approach them. Many friendships never develop because sexual instincts intrude. I love men and women differences and what moves our species onward. But human relationships consist of more than propagation.

Sometimes, I have meaningful conversations with the opposite sex. But I always wonder, what are they really thinking? Wariness overtakes my thoughts and I wish I had a buffer zone.

Should I have made this third person? I didn't feel it. Do other women feel this? Or would they rather talk about recipes, bargains and how bad their husbands are?

Should I have hit published?