It’s been a few days since we’ve been to the pool. The weather began to change the middle of last week, we were at the LVS over the weekend, and so far this week it’s been too cool to get in the water.
With just two weeks until M. and C. begin school , we’ve enjoyed our first year as members of a pool. We had been averaging four trips a week until this week, usually for about two hours at a time. The girls have made a couple new friends there, but usually either play together or with girls they knew before we joined the pool. And I’ll again be completely honest: there are a number of attractive babysitters/nannies/moms who frequent the pool. Do not judge me.
Kind of related to that last comment, I also enjoy watching the 10, 11, 12 year old boys who follow a few of the female lifeguards around like puppies. There’s one lifeguard in particular who always greets her young fans with a smile, a joke, and a few minutes of conversation. I like it because I remember being there, at the edge of puberty when you first start to realize that girls are kind of cool to look at and you’d like to find a way to hang out with them.
Specifically, a summer in the early 80s when I spent a few weeks hopelessly chatting up a lifeguard at the pool near my grandparents’ home in central Kansas. I don’t remember how I found the courage to begin talking to a cute high school girl, although I’m pretty sure one of my older cousins knew her and that was the ice breaker. Anyway, I recall waiting for her turn on the lifeguard stand, then casually walking over, saying hello, and spending the rest of her shift talking to her. About all I remember of those conversations is me reminding her constantly that I lived in Kansas City. I think I knew the odds were slim a 16-17 year old girl would be interested in a skinny 11-year-old, so I had to go with my biggest selling point: being from the city. As wheat stalks bowed in the breeze just beyond the pool’s fence, I’d talk about going to Worlds Of Fun, Royals games, and other cool city to try to impress her. To her credit, she was always friendly and never told me to beat it and let her do her job. But neither did she ever offer to share some Laffy Taffy during adult swim.
So props to the pre-teen boys all over the country who are going through their first real crush this summer courtesy of an older lifeguard. And even bigger props to those lifeguards who take the time to cheerfully talk to the goofy boys who trail them around the pool deck.