neighbourhood: swimming pools

Right before I started Kindergarten, my mom told me that we would be going in a carpool. I was extreamly excited, envisioning the swim party that would be going on with my friends in this vehicle with a pool in the back!

My brother told me when I was seven that at the bottom of our swimming pool, where the filter cap was, that an invisible laser beam came out of it, aiming straight up. If you broke the beam, the bottom of the pool would open up and a shark would swim out. Whenever I went off the diving board I always jumped to the side to avoid the beam. I still do it to this day, without thinking about it.

I was swimming in my pool when I accidentally touched the floating chlorine buoy. I was so terrified that I was going to die of chlorine overexposure that my parents had told me about and that if I died in my sleep, vultures would come eat me up.

I can understand that chlorine part, but I still don't know where the vultures part came from.

When I was about 7 or 8 I thought that when my parents told me not to get near our pool cover was not because I would drown with it pulling me down but rather there were sharks under there. So when it was back half way I would literally take goggles and try to see them on the other side of the pool but stay really close to the shallow end wall.

When I was around five or six years old I discovered that putting my private parts near the place in the pool where water came out felt really good. I didn't understand it. I somehow thought that I was refilling my bladder. One day, I had been doing that for a while when my Mom asked what I was doing. I said "nothing." My mom then whispered something to her friend. It was not until about 6 years later that I discovered that what I had been doing was called "masturbation." I then remembered that incident and was horrified to know that I had been masturbating in public and that my mother and her friend knew about it.

When I was little, my dad told me that if you pee in the pool the water will turn purple

my Dad told me ice rinks were defrosted every evening and turned into swimming pools

I had only seen depth markers that marked feet before, so when I went to a pool that had depth markers that said 3 FT 4 IN, I thought that the "4 IN" part meant there were four people in the pool. It didn't occur to me that I could see more than four people, and there was no way the depth markers could have counted how many people were in the pool anyway.

I used to believe that swimming pools could only run/be built facing east-west because the water would fall out if it ran north-south. Not sure where that came from, but I know it still comes up when we are with family friends....

When I was small I was in the back garden with my brother ( about 8 years older). There was an old unused paddling pool out there, half full of water, that I was poking with a stick. Big brother told me not to poke but I did anway and the water came flowing out. "Youve done it now mate, the water went done that crack and now the world's going to end" "oh no" I said "how long will it take?" "3 years, 4 at the very most" " Oh!". Using my rudimentary maths skills I worked out how old I would be when The End came and what I would do with the time left to me. He was my Big Brother and I beleived him.

When I was 10 or so I saw the movie Jaws. I believed that he could some how transfer from water to water, such as the ocean, to my bath tub, to my pool or even a puddle(specially the big one at the end of my drive way). So when I went swimming, (some how) I saw Jaws and would flip out and literally almost drown myself. I honestly believed that I was being eatten alive in my shark infested pool.

Oh those silly years of giving my parents heart attacks with my over active imagination.

Our family used to watch Dr Who every Saturday and the episode about the Green Death (the one which looked like slime and would crawl over you and make you glow in the dark and then kill you) affected me for many years.

It took me years (not kidding) before I could swim over a grate on the bottom of the swimming pool without having a panic attack bc that was where the green death came from.

Ironically, I became a collegiate swimmer so I guess I got over my grate phobia at some point.

I used to believe that when I swam in a swimming pool too long I would grow fins and be able to breathe underwater, like a mermaid, and still be able to survive out of water!!

My family and I always went to the same pool growing up, and it was the kind where you have to shower before getting into the pool. I thougth the shower water put a protective shield on us, so we wouldn't melt because of the chlorine.

I believed that the Kreepy Crawlie used to clean our pool, would follow me around the pool and eat me.

I used to think that those little things at the bottom of public pools that are water filters (I think) would suck our your intestines if you got too close, so I spent the majority of my childhood being really really frightened of public pools.