Swimmers
I think I was in the third grade when we got our first above-ground pool. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's possible it was Wal-Mart. It was a tiny little thing, only three feet deep and made of green flimsy plastic held together with steel struts.
My dad put the thing together by himself, if I recall. It didn't take him long.
We used it a lot that summer, and when summer was over, it was torn down and thrown away. Turns out, it was a cheap investment to see if we'd actually use a swimming pool beyond the novelty phase.
That following spring, we got a much larger, much nicer pool professionally installed by the company that sold it to us. My dad and one of our family friends dug and leveled the pad for it, and I remember him complaining that it was a lot of work compared to the other one.
We used that above-ground pool until my parents divorced and they both moved away. I ignored it, left it covered, didn't give the first shit about it. When my mom came home with her new husband, one of the first orders of business was to get it back up and running. Turns out, "up and running" really meant completely replacing.
There may have been bullet holes in the sidewall.
Hey, man, what can I say? College was sometimes crazy.
I have two very distinct, very different sets of memories around that pool. Both sets are great, and I waver on which one I appreciate more.
The first group of memories surround horseplay in my young teen years. My best friends would come over, and we'd wrestle, play "water polo" with a soccer ball and a round ring inflatable, and just generally goof off. Sometimes my mom would get in on it, and we'd have all-out athletic days getting water-logged and sunburned.
The other set of memories were wrapped in a blue and purple bikini. God, she was beautiful. We'd go swimming on some of those afternoons she'd visit; Sundays were our days. I'd pick her up around noon and she had a strict 9pm curfew. Those nine hours were the best ones of the week.
That collection of nine-hour days are some of the best hours of my life.
During swim season, before credit cards and hotels, that swimming pool was the closest thing to naked we could get. We could "wrestle" and horseplay and sometimes sneak in kisses.
Handjobs in crystal clear waters sure do look cool in that special moment at the end.
My mom used to remind us that "girls can get pregnant in pools, don't forget that," but we rolled our eyes and ducked down behind the sidewall where we couldn't be seen from the house.
I'm pretty sure my grandfather knew what we were doing. He'd sit on his covered porch, smoking his pipe. Rocking in his chair, we could see his shadow, but never could see his face.
Funny, he always seemed to be interested in smoking that pipe on the porch when the blue and purple bikini came to visit.
Can't blame him. She was a gorgeous girl, and still is a gorgeous woman.
I remember the smell of chlorine on her skin and the feel of her hands all over me in those lazy summer afternoons.
There's still a swimming pool Back Home, but I have a hard time climbing the steps to the deck that surrounds it. Not because it's a physical challenge, but because that pool reminds me of better days.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, but it's even stronger when what seems like it was a better time... really was.