Over the weekend, I was emailing one of my cousins as we discussed our summer plans. Her family lives in the Washington, DC suburbs and is planning a trip to Cape May in about a month, we're thinking of a trip down there later in August). During one of the back and forths I noted that I would be logging off shortly to take my children to the community pool for the first time this summer season. She responded she took her children the day before to their pool and froze, but her children went in without a problem and had a great time. She signed off wondering when we got so old that we care about such a thing as an unheated pool (especially in May).
I laughed as I thought of my "older" cousin (by a few years, but our children are the same age) as my wife and I packed up our children and drove (we used to walk, but it's a little hard with an independent 3 year old so we splurged on what we figured was 15-20 cents worth of gas for our Civic and drove) to the pool. As we arrived, with an air temperature somewhere around 80, the lifeguard made an announcement that the water was 56F and that children in the main pool for over 30 minutes are in danger of getting hypothermia. Gulp. My wife, knowing I usually like it cold, laughed and wondered if I had finally found a temperature too cold for me. Heh heh.
A look around the pool showed only children swimming with adults just dangling their legs. As my wife took our 3 year old to the moderate kiddy pool, I suggested to our 7 year old that we do the same. He laughed and told me to hurry up so we could go swimming in the big pool. Gulp. My only hope is that we'll see one of his friends and he'll forget about me.
We get to the pool and I see my first bit of bad luck: none of his friends from the neighborhood are around. Uh oh. I sit on the edge of the pool and let my legs dangle. My son, with all the bravado of a 7 year old, just plunges right in. What happened to the shy kid who would never have done that? Soon, I'm getting splashed by some of the other children in the pool and decide to slide in. Since it was only 3 feet, the water was only up to my swimming trunks.
As I adjusted to the cold, my son asked me when I would swim with him. As soon as I can feel my feet again I respond. I started walking to the deeper parts of the pool, letting the water slowly cover my body. After a time, I decided it was time to take the plunge, leaned forward and started swimming . It took my breath away, literally. By that I mean the water was so cold that I almost gasped as the icy water struck my face. Fortunately I remembered that I was under water and that would be a bad thing.
After a few trial laps (well, more like trial strokes) I felt ready to swim with my son. And we did swim, for all of 20 seconds, because at that point, his friends showed up and I was just a forgotten, frozen man on the side of the pool. I'm sure someday I'll appreciate this, but I was never so happy as I was when I got out of that pool and wrapped myself in a towel and slowly warmed up. By the way, the children stayed in for over 30 minutes and never once complained of being cold. The parents on the other hand .....
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