Water World

Newsletter 2023-05-30

Dry land is for grown-ups. My kids have returned to the sea.

We’re less than a week into summer break and the girls have already had to turn down an invitation to the public pool because it conflicted with a previously scheduled water balloon fight. Their fingers will be pruney until September. It’s a survival behavior they picked up from our primordial ancestors. Their genes still remember the stage when they were tadpoles in the womb. Their biology has yet to accept that we live in a house with air conditioning where they don’t need to wallow in cool water all day to avoid heat stroke. Their failure to understand that concept might be why they have a zero percent success rate with remembering to close the front door. Are you even a parent if you don’t have to tell your kids ten times a day that you’re not trying to air condition the whole neighborhood? If global warming switches to global cooling, you can thank my kids.

Our public pool opened for the season at the start of Memorial Day Weekend. It looks a lot different than the one I went to as a kid. Back then, a pool was just a giant rectangle of water. The most exciting thing about it was a big plastic barrel. You could stand on it in the middle of the pool. Then other kids would push you off, sending you back into the water. There were also diving boards that you would stand on, again, to go back in the water. We simply couldn’t think of anything better than leaving the pool only to immediately go back in. That was the height of entertainment in the 1990s. No wonder dial-up internet blew all of our minds.

Pools today are an entirely different affair. They’re basically mini-amusement parks, but with lifeguards instead of carnies. That’s quite a change up since one wants to keep you safe and the other is actively trying to murder you. Our pool doesn’t even have a pool, per se. There’s no big rectangle of water. Instead, there’s a wave pool, a lazy river, a lily pad obstacle course, an aquatic toddler playground, and a couple of water slides. It’s a custom designed facility built with the implicit understanding that children have the attention span of goldfish. My kids make sure to never stay at any one attraction for more than fifteen seconds. They spend more going back and forth on the concrete in between water features, giving the lifeguards ample opportunities to blow their whistles and tell them not to run. Mind you, if I try to get my kids to run in any other context, they sit down on the ground in protest. But at the pool, running is fun because it’s forbidden. Maybe I should forbid my kids from cleaning their rooms.

Photo by Oswald Elsaboath on Unsplash

In terms of price, the pool is the deal of the century thanks to the family pass I buy that covers the whole summer. Of course, it’s not as cheap as it could have been. They charge me extra because I exceed the standard two-child allotment the world is built for. Someone finally figured out that big families were gaming the system. Have lots of kids to save money. It’s the most diabolical get-rich-quick scheme ever devised. Even though the pool charged me extra, buying a family pass is still orders of magnitude cheaper than installing my own pool, which would come with massive upfront costs plus time consuming and expensive maintenance. Then there’s the constant fear that your children will drown. At the public pool, there are lifeguards specifically tasked with keeping my children alive, which I can say first hand is the hardest job in the world. At home, I would be the lifeguard. I don’t do the best job of keeping track of my kids on land. Add in a clear liquid that makes them sink quicker than quick sand and I would definitely be out of my depth. It’s ironic that a substance utterly necessary for our survival can also so easily kill us. Then again, you need food to stay alive, but you could also be crushed to death by a dump truck full of meatloaf. Too much of anything isn’t great for your life expectancy—unless you really, really love meatloaf.

It was too much to ask for the water to stay at the pool. My kids also want to get doused at home. They amassed quite a collection of water balloons specifically for that end. Back in my day, a water balloon was just a regular balloon that you spent four minutes trying ineffectively to fill with water. It took about two hours of preparation to sustain thirty seconds of water balloon combat. In war, ammunition always runs out faster than you think. These days, however, there are clusters of water balloons that you can fill up a dozen at a time. Each one has a little straw leading to a nozzle that you screw on to the end of a hose. When they’re full, they fall off the straws like ripe grapes off the vine. We had two packs of four hundred water balloons for the start of summer. Unfortunately, one pack was from a previous year that we bought at an end of season sale. For whatever reason, water toys are way cheaper in October. The rubber bands that held the balloons on the straws lost their elasticity and became brittle. The balloons fell off their stems with almost no water in them, leading to four hundred consecutive duds. That’s the danger of always going with the lowest bidder. We need a new quartermaster, or maybe just a bigger budget for our water bill.

The kids had better luck with the second batch. Those balloons had fresh rubber bands since they were from the birthday party a few days ago. The girls also received a set of four huge water guns from an uncle who doesn’t like me very much. He’s looking forward to the day when I angrily text him about how I became collateral damage. The kids filled up their balloons and then topped out several plastic bins with water to use for reloading their water guns. They were finally ready for battle. That’s when the screaming started.

There’s not much difference between a water fight and an actual fight. Once the water battle started, the complaints flew nearly as fast as the balloons. “You’re throwing too hard!” “You hit me in the face!” “I said, ‘Time out!’” That last one is a strategy straight from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I attempted to end the fight but was about as effective as other peacekeepers throughout history. I should have asked the UN to send my kids a strongly worded letter. I finally resolved matters by pulling out the child who was the most upset and letting the other three continue with their water war. After a few minutes, the kid I removed insisted on rejoining the fray. She didn’t really care about fairness after all; she just wanted revenge. That’s how all sibling squabbles should be settled.

Based on everything I’ve written so far, you’d think my kids live in the water. Yet, somehow, I can’t get them to take baths. Maybe they figure their hygiene requirements are covered by their water battles. I assure you they are not. I need to slip some soap into those water balloons. Either that or I’ll enter the fray with my pressure washer. Baths are just one of many “chores” I naively trust the kids to take care of on their own when I’m not home. They’re by themselves during the day when my wife and I leave for work. Technically, my thirteen-year-old is in charge, but it’s misleading to imply any sense of order. At best, my children are a loose confederation of completely independent jurisdictions. Sometimes, that works out okay. For example, they each feed themselves. That’s been simple enough so far since we have enough leftovers from the triple birthday party to last into early next year. In true Midwestern fashion, my greatest fear for the party was running out of food. Accordingly, I ordered 150 pieces of fried chicken. Guests at the party ate roughly thirty. We also had portions of three cakes leftover plus about a thousand side dishes. There’s fresh food, too, and by that, I mean shelf-stable cereal, which is a valid source of nutrients for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The system seems to work. So far, none of the children have starved to death, and our stock pile of leftovers is gradually dwindling. Either the girls are successfully feeding themselves every day or they’re throwing out the food at a steady but believable rate so as not to make me suspicious. As long as I end up with a clean fridge, I’ll be happy, even if they never actually eat any of the leftovers. A single bowl of Captain Crunch has enough sugar to keep them alive for a week.

I wish the girls took the same level of initiative with bathing. Even the kids who are young enough to get away with showers every other day during the winter now need to be hosed off daily. They get hot and sweaty simply by existing and also because they leave the door open with the air conditioning running so the whole house gets hot. In addition to that, they’re also sticky at all times for unknown reasons. Maybe it’s that slime they got for their birthday party, or perhaps it’s because they share half of their DNA with snails. I’m not a scientist. I just know that the liberal application of soap and water would solve most of the problems in my life right now. That’s why the kids resist it like demons at a baptism.

I have yet to figure out what makes a pool so fun but a tub so repellent. It’s a self-contained water park right there in our bathroom, although the "self-contained" part is dubious. On previous occasions, the girls have splashed out so much water that it leaked through the floor of our second story bathroom and onto me a level below. I never expected showering to lead to ceiling plaster damage. Apparently I missed that part in all the parenting books I didn’t read.

I had hoped the outdoor water fights would get the kids at least a little clean, but they always end up with an extra layer of dirt and grass. Obviously a typical water gun duel involves lots of tackling. The entirety of childhood is a full contact sport. The kids don’t just get themselves dirty, however. They leave the yard a mess as well. I’ll be picking up little bits of shredded plastic long after all of them are grown and gone. My yard looks like a clown exploded. It’s especially visible thanks to all the barren spots where I can’t get any grass to grow. The extra colors really make those dead spots pop. I’m sure my neighbors are thrilled.

I suppose I’m taking my blessings for granted. I should be grateful that I have clean water at all, even if my kids never use it to actually get clean. There won’t be any risk of dehydration this summer. My kids are basically mermaids with worse grooming habits. Then again, Ariel’s morning routine is highly suspect. How can she live underwater without her hair being constantly and impossibly tangled? My kids have to put their hair in tight braids if they don’t want to emerge from the water with enormous rat nests on their heads. If The Little Mermaid were at all realistic, Ariel never would have made the prince fall in love with her before the deadline. She would have spent every second out of the water brushing intractable tangles and swearing like a sailor. Actually, she lost her voice, so she would have had to mime her profanity instead. Any marriageable members of royalty would have kept their distance. Disney once again filled little girls’ heads with unrealistic expectations. All I ask is that when they make the remake of the remake of the remake, they finally give Ariel a swimming cap.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James