Canada Day at the Pool

What do you do when it's Canada Day and the sun is shining? I'll tell you: when Tracey invites you to the public pool to sunbathe and go swimming, YOU ACCEPT.

Granted, I haven't been in a public pool since I was a kid so the experience was a little foreign to me. I was surprised when we separated at the entrance to go through doors marked "BOYS" and "GIRLS." I was even more surprised when I saw signs demanding that I take a shower before entering the pool area, but everybody walked right past the showers and ignored the signs. It would have been annoying, showering with a pack of strange pre-teen boys.

The public pool is terrific for people-watching. You see all types of bodies, backgrounds, and motivations. I really do appreciate the spectacle of horny highschool students being "cool" around their girlfriends.

There was a steel band.

We lay down and oiled up and rested in the sun. Eventually I screwed up my courage and entered the pool itself, where Tracey's son taught me to breast stroke. Small children were clinging to styrofoam floats. The sky was cloudless. The water was cool. It was easy to forget that none of us had bathed.

Sometimes the lazy, chatty days are the best.