POOL.

You're doing it wrong.

The first weekend of August, little Miss Brooke stayed with us overnight so her parents could go to a concert.  She wanted to play video games and we stayed up until 1:00AM doing so, and the next morning, after bacon and waffles, she wanted to swim.  The amount of fun generated was astronomical.  After a few minutes of observation, Alan opined, "We've had this pool for three years.  All you do is float around, and sometimes float around drinking wine.  You've been doing it wrong."  Case in point, there was a leaf at the bottom of the pool, which instinctively I wanted to remove and toss aside.  Instead, Brooke devised a whole game of tossing, diving, jumping and triumphantly waving about the leaf.

Then I got into the pool with her, and we played Sharkey.  I have a stuffed floating shark that usually just hangs around while I float about, but Brooke had other ideas.  Sharkey became the epicenter of a game that lasted nearly two hours.

The rules of Sharkey are many and complicated, and subject to change on a seven-year-old's whim.  New rules may be instituted based upon unforeseen contingencies which pop up from time to time during sessions of Sharkey.

Still, I tried my best.

The absolute very most wonderful thing about Sharkey was if you got caught out - like if you were in Time Out or had committed some transgression - you had to go to a certain area of the pool that Brooke had roped off with pool noodles, that she deemed "The Seafood Section" and wait 10 seconds.

Honestly, do you see the hilarity of this child's mind???  You misbehave and you are exiled to The Seafood Section!!!

'Don't make me stop this car' pales in comparison to 'don't make me put you in the seafood section'!


Here we see that of the game participants, Sharkey has transgressed.

He has been imprisoned upon the Barbie float by a green pool noodle, and is en route to The Seafood Section (see pink pool noodle and duckie, background).









This is not Brooke, because you can't see her, hiding under one of the floats to frighten me when I returned from inside the house.

She was very pleased when I snapped 'angrily' at Alan, "WHERE is Brooke?!?  Honestly, I leave you in charge for TEN MINUTES and you've lost an ENTIRE CHILD?!?"




Yeah, but pool - I've been doing it wrong.