The Neighborhood Pool

When we were house-hunting, everyone advised us how nice it was to have a neighborhood pool. I didn't really believe them. We were house-hunting in the snow, and it is always hard to imagine what a different season brings, even if you know first hand, let alone if you don't. We're not a very swimmy family, I thought. We're too fair-skinned to stay out too long in the blazing sun, pool or no pool. We'd go for the odd quick dip, but we wouldn't hang out.

We did, however, end up buying a house in a neighborhood with a pool. They were right. It is a very life-enhancing thing. We have become a swimmy family. I am nagged daily until we go. We stay for hours. I have bought UV-protection swimwear, lots of sunscreen and have learnt to be less paranoid. I am a convert to the neighborhood pool. It is a lot of fun.

There are times since I've been here, and I'm sure this is a common experience, when I feel I am in a film. So much of American culture is familiar to us Brits through film and television, that when you experience it for real, it feels strangely fictional. Do Americans feel like they've walked into "Notting Hill" when they visit London, I wonder? Anwyay, the neighborhood pool is very much that being-in-a-film experience. Marvellously, it's like being in a film about the 60's. It starts with the architecture. The building is long and low, and has decorative features, squares and stripes, which tie it to its age. There is a pale blue telephone on the wall in the entrance, which must be the original.The pool is that shade of turquoise that all good pools used to be, before they went pastel. It's not a rectangle, but that shape that you learn the name of at school and then forget since you never have need of the word. Except now. Like a rectangle, but with the two long side slanting inwards instead of being parallel, and the top end shorter than the bottom. Trapezoid? Rhomboid? (And while we're on the subject, whatever happened to the word "oblong"? I used to love that word, but "rectangle" has won the day, and you never hear good old oblong any more.)

I digress. Back to the not-rectangular neighborhood pool. There are chairs and loungers made of soft plastic strips, so you can't stand on them as your feet will go through (although if you are a child, you'll have a jolly good try). There is the radio played over loudspeakers, lots of golden oldies. There are two lifeguards sitting on chairs at the top of ladders (two, mind, for a smallish pool: this is very reassuring for mothers of not-very-strong swimmers). The lifeguards blow a whistle if you try running by the side of the pool, or any other naughty behaviour. There is a hatch where you can buy sugar and artificial colouring combined in various forms: solid, liquid, fizzy or frozen. There are lots of children diving for rings, or playing water basketball. There are parents. There are teenagers in small groups, either awkwardly self-conscious or self-consciously confident, depending on which side of that particular line they exist. The teenagers enhance the 60s feel, as their swimwear is all turquoise and brown circles, or lollipop pink polka dots. Bikinis combining halter neck tops with little hipster shorts are the thing. One of my English friends has kindly advised me that Boden deliver such things to the US. Thank you, Fran, but get real. I've had three babies. I am making my own small contribution to the 60's theme by wearing some odd, slightly winged, sunglasses. I thought I'd lost them in the move, and was looking forward to getting new ones, some of those clever ones that go dark when you're outside and clear when you're inside, but sadly, I've found my old odd ones, so am having to work on justifying a new pair to myself before I can do that.

Anyway, this misses the point. I don't need to look the part, because it is me who is watching the film. I am someone who has inadvertently wandered onto the set and am watching the action. I don't have to be part of it. The odd glasses are just a nod in its direction.

So there we are. The neighborhood pool. The perceptive amongst you, and the pedants, will have noticed that I have not been consistent in my use of American and English spelling. Neighborhood, but colouring and behaviour. Let me reassure you. There is a logic in it, which goes like this: I'm sticking with my English spelling, but the neighborhood pool has to be the neighborhood pool. There's no such thing as a neighbourhood pool. They just don't exist. And maybe that's why I am getting so fond of the neighborhood pool. It's an extra. It's something we couldn't have enjoyed in Scotland. Not wrong or different, but a bonus!