I took my kids and some others to the new pool on our side of town. I have to say it was fun and that the climbing wall and zip line were great for the novelty factor. We saw lots of people we knew and I have no doubt we’ll be back many times this summer.
After a while, though, I realized that the pool was carefully engineered to minimize actual swimming. I noticed this because I was initially very nervous about keeping track of the 5 kids I was with (there are various reasons for this including safety and fact that at least two think it is OK to fish food out of the garbage when feeling peckish). I soon realized that I could relax because kids visiting this pool spend most of their time either waiting in line for attractions like the zip line or lazy river (or cliff diving or wall climbing or water slide, or the snack bar) or actually floating in an inner tube on the “lazy river” which is 3 feet deep and forbidden to swim in. There is a small “lap” pool with no deep end that is OK to bob around in without a flotation device. No actual swimming was happening there either (to be fair, this was a crowded day and you could probably swim there on a weekday). A significant portion of the lap pool is devoted to a huge ramp so people don’t have to work too hard to haul their asses out to get back in line for nachos.
This new pool replaces the old Como Pool which was actually a “swimming” pool where people could actually swim. Yes, I’m bitching after others put a lot of planning and effort into making this new pool happen. No, I wasn’t involved during the public input phase. Yes, everything was better back in my day.
Highland Pool, which is on the other side of town has a huge Olympic-sized pool with a deep end that is over my head. You can actually play tag and swim more than 15 feet before you run into a wall. A kid might even start breathing hard at Highland. Highland pool was also recently rebuilt to have water park-ish features like a climbing wall. You can still see the rusty spots in the concrete where the high-dive once stood. You can’t see those spots at Como any more.
My payback for taking five kids to the pool turns out to be a multi-day bitch session for not putting sunscreen on the little snowflakes. There is a reason for this. We got to the pool after 3PM. I don’t apply sunscreen after 3PM. That’s one of my rules.
That sunscreen deal must be a family rule. And your brother pretty much had the same review of the pool.
Sarah took the boys last week. They had a ball but I too feel your pain.