Mermaids and Towel Beds
Sun time during summer time meant pool time for Kim and me. I always put on my favorite one-piece that I could only wear to Kim’s because according to my mother it was too old to wear in public. I loved that bathing suit in spite of the fabric snarls along the bottom from all the times I’d sat on the concrete and scooted along or into the pool, but even I acknowledged the tenuous abilities of the thread holding the side seem together. If the seam finally tore, revealing a small circle of my white skin, it would be ok if Kim saw. Mine and Kim’s bedrooms were only separated by a road, and we were like sisters.
Kim had a sister, Shelly the Snob, and a brother, Nathan the Brat, but I didn’t have anyone, so it was good Kim and I were close in age and we both loved water.
When we were in Kim’s pool we played pool games. Sometimes we placed plastic diving rings the colors of Lifesaver candies onto our ankles, and we made it so our legs stayed together like tails. We were mermaids. Mermaids lived in the deep-end because it was more challenging to swim where your tail couldn’t touch.
We had other games for when we weren’t mermaids, when we had our legs. Often we’d compete. Who could get across the pool fastest while hopping? Who could swim faster doing the butterfly? We liked to see how long we could hold our breath, swimming back and forth and back and then only halfway because that was as far as we could make it without air. We invented relays with instructions such as: swim to the middle of the pool, touch the brick (or ring or toy), hop twice, go to the shallow end, stand on your hands for five seconds, swim underwater to the deep end to collect four pennies without coming up for air...
And we played the common games such as Marco Polo, which everyone knew how to play. Kim and I changed it though yelling whatever we could think of. Sometimes when Kim was “it” she yelled, “Strawberry,” and I called back, “Shortcake” and sometimes I’d yell, “Peanut Butter” and she’d say, “Jelly.” It was fun but Nathan didn’t get it. He always said “Polo” no matter what we called out first.
As it grew later, we made lawn chairs into houses and laid down towel beds. We had tea parties with plastic cups and pool water and made jokes about Shelly and Nathan who weren’t old enough to live under lawn chairs and had to live in the plastic house whose roof was a lot shorter than when they got it a few Christmases back. In these houses the sun set over us and we were sisters and there was no road separating our towel beds and laughter.
I miss those days.
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