I Went to the Pool Alone

The heat index in my town today is 120 degrees.

There’s nothing wrong with your eyes (or bifocals). You read that right.

120 degrees.

The actual temperature is 100.

This is stupid.

The only decision was to go to the pool.

Gabriel is at his dad’s house and Jane is 15, so the answer to “do you want to…” is almost always “nah.” Charley was working but his answer to anything involving an activity that might sunburn the tops of his feet is also "nah."

So I went by my own self.

Here’s all the things that happened.

They play the music too loudly, but the chairs are nice, the bathrooms are clean, and the snack bar is cheap. As Lita Ford belted "It ain’t no big thing" across the community center while sweat pooled in my lower back, I decided this heat wave was, in fact, a very big thing.

I swam laps in the lazy river area, and when I say swam laps, what I really mean is sort of swam, sort of floated in the current like a happy perimenopausal sea lion. Within 30 seconds of disembarking onto my poolside chair I was completely dry and frying.

I sprayed myself with double layers of sunscreen, wore a giant hat, and started reading a new book.

I got a Diet Coke from the snack bar.

I watched a woman chase her toddler who had stripped off all his clothes while smearing a chocolate bar all over his face.

I put on more sunscreen.

A woman yelled at her partner “THAT’S NOT THE POINT” and I was sad I didn’t get in on the front end of that conversation.

My skin began to sizzle, so I got back in the pool and swam some more laps.

This time, a pre-teen cannonballed into the lazy river with his giant floaty and baptized me against my will.

I drifted past the "whirlpool" section, where two little girls were trying to fight their way back upstream. Their panic rivaled the extras in Titanic, but since the water came up to about their waists I simply floated by like David Attenborough, observing nature without interfering.

I got back out, sizzled some more, and started reading my book. Then I think a hot flash hit me. It's hard to know, since it was already 4,000 degrees outside, but what I DO know is that the entire top half of my head suddenly burst into flames. I was the human embodiment of Hades from Disney's criminally underrated movie Hercules.

I had two choices: jump back into the pool and continue the cycle of intergenerational lazy-river baptismal violence, or put on my flip-flops and leave with what dignity I had left.

I chose dignity.

Here’s what I know.

They need to take Lita Ford off the pool playlist.

(Kids don’t need to know she didn’t get laid and got in a fight.)

And tonight I am Googling property on the Oregon coast.

I need to dream of a world where the weather doesn't require SPF 900.