Summer Time Rolls

Those of us that have lived in the south our whole lives (and generally inside a five mile radius in Dekalb County) there are some common features we can all relate to in the summer.

First of all, it’s hot. Really, really hot. Like sweating just looking out the window hot. Then it’s humid. It’s so humid we pray for one of those terrible thunderstorms to come at 4 PM to clear the air so we can breathe just a little easier. These thunderstorms are awesome until it stops raining and then the steam comes off the streets and it’s like an outdoor sauna.

When I was a kid we didn’t have air conditioning until I was maybe 12 or so. We had an attic fan that was so loud that it felt like the entire house could pick up and fly away at any moment. When the fan inevitably turned off at 2AM things went from LOUD to CRICKETS until my mother or father got up and reset the timer clock for another couple of hours. I can still feel the force of the wind sucking air into the house. We also had window fans, floor fans, and box fans. The entire house rattled from May-October. None of this mattered though because as a kid in Dekalb County we did not hang around the house during the summer. We went to the pool.

From the ages of 8-12 our mothers dropped us off at swim team at 9 AM. We took lunches, a towel, no sunscreen and stayed there until 4 or 5 PM. Every day. The exceptions were swim meet days when you weren’t allowed to hang at the pool to stay fresh for the meet that night and Sunday afternoons when you went at 1 PM after church. We wore our swim team bathing-suits every day, all day. No variations. We swam. We played. We tanned. Gossiped. Annoyed the lifeguards.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I have no idea what my mother did while I was at the pool. I assume she did mom things like cook and clean or grocery shop. In reality, I was away from the house more during the summer than I was during the school year. Hopefully she took a nap. I know I would.

During the 1970’s and 80’s the pool provided an opportunity for kids to stretch our wings safely inside a fenced area with “adult supervision” (aka: teenaged lifeguards.) We mastered diving board tricks, invented games that were specific to individual pools (We had Gutter Ball and Fish). We had our summer friends who were not necessarily the same as our school friends. Sure, there was some crossover, but not as much as you would think, which again, allowed us to push outside our cliques and groups at school and develop into something different during the summer.

As much as football is a passion in the south (remember, I went to Lakeside in the 1980’s and 90’s…football was a passion) swim team in the summer was something, in my house at least, you had little choice in doing. Practice was horrible. Laps upon laps. The pool was freeeezing in late May (no heated pools back then) but we did as we were told because we worshipped our swim coaches, and strived to impress the older kids and above all we just wanted another blue ribbon to put in the shoebox in the closet.

Swim meets were almost holy. As I said, we were not allowed at the pool that day— instead forced inside to “rest” and stay out of the sun (Imagine how awesome that was: no cable, no air conditioning, no Gameboys—I have no idea what we did? Read?) My mother would then force me to eat an early dinner and pack a snack. The big deal for us then, for some crazy reason, was to eat dry, un-cooked Jello at the swim meet. Whoever came up with this idea was a moron but as a 9 year-old I thought it was amazing. I have no idea why my mother went along with this.  She was probably like me today, a 50 cent box of Jello kept me content through a 6 hour swim meet. It’s like me giving my kids Sour Patch Kids or whatever. “Sure, fine—just gooooo.”

Fast forward 30 years and I’m still a resident of Dekalb County and still a member of a community pool. We joined a pool when our daughter, now 10, was 6 months old. At the time we lived in East Lake and we looked around and thought… “How do you raise children in the summer without a community pool?”

We honestly had no idea.

See, my husband grew up a couple miles from me and went to a different pool (although, admittedly, the same one we’re members of today) and his childhood summer experience was nearly identical to mine (I’m pretty sure he had air conditioning but he had to walk to the pool whereas I hitched a ride.) Summer at the pool is all we know and it’s now all our girls know too.

Many of our friends give us the side-eye and excuses about why they don’t join the swim team at their pools. Too busy. Too early. Too much work. Too much competition. I genuinely feel a little sorry for their kids that they aren’t getting to experience this unique part of our culture. Every summer I watch my kids grow-up just a little more in those three months at the pool than they would in any other environment. They learn how to be a part of a team, and how to remember to pay attention for their race times, how to keep track of their stuff and how to tattoo each other's bodies with Sharpie.

Do they like swim practice? Not always. Do they win all their races? Definitely not. Do they eat gobs of candy, Chic-fil-a and run around on a sugar buzz every Tuesday night? Yes. Yes, they do. Why? Because it’s summer and in a world where new phones and new games and new TV shows blink and ring and lure our kids in every second of every day  I’m glad I can offer them something that has barely changed since I was a kid.

(For the record: I was a member of Briarcliff Woods Beach Club. My name is on the back wall for holding a record for some relay. Trust me, I wasn’t the reason we hold that record.)