When I quit my job, I did not anticipate a July day where I stood in four feet of community pool bath water—with a sunscreen sheen layer on top—booing children.
But that’s what you do on a Thursday, deep into the mid-afternoon hours, when the camp counselor yells, “belly flop contest in the deep end for last day of camp.”
I need to see this, I thought.
My life as an adult is boring. It is uncool. It is routine, and living on the edge, I’ve recently noticed, is when I grocery shop at night. I’ve become a bit like the art on my walls, stuck to this place like a command strip. This is suburban living, and not so much a complaint as it is an observation about myself and most of the people I know. No one does anything exciting. They take photos of ocean waves at the beach, their children doing things, maybe a new haircut—but the majority are not jumping out of airplanes, trekking through lush greenery, getting sweaty beneath a disco ball. This week I took a photo of my new bathroom cabinet and brass faucet and just plopped it on Instagram without a social media strategy. I didn’t even hashtag that motherfucker. It was thrilling.
This is comforting to me in a host of ways that feel safe and familiar, and I enjoy it. After all, the pandemic skids along, monkeypox is bearing down on us, and shit is expensive. But I can’t help but feel, after seeing the kids and their belly flops, we need some reckless energy in our lives.
After the announcement, three-quarters of the pool form an audience near the deep end. The adultier-adults keep doing their own thing at the front. I water-walk my broken body and its blessed weightlessness through the water, so I can get close, but not too close that I seem over eager and creepy.
The diving board is my favorite swimming pool accessory. For a certain type of community dad, the diving board cuts through all body aches and background noise of yesteryear, beckoning with whispers of “you still got it.”
And do they ever, as I cheer them on with my zeroed-in eyeballs when they stand in line, hovering three-to-five feet above their nearest water-logged compatriot. Their initial steps show a bit of trepidation, but not fear—this is muscle memory we’re talking about and the sand paper board still feels familiar—they launch themselves above the blue waters, grabbing onto their knees, mesmerizing the children with marble eyeballs and gaping mouths below as they anticipate the splash that’s coming.
And the splash is always, how-did-that-not-drain-the-pool epic, making the community pool dad walk a little taller and feel a bit younger for most of the day until he drags everyone’s gargantuan shit back to the minivan, later.
The line at the diving board is full of children of various sizes and ages, hues and genders. There are teeny bodies the wind might blow away and tall buildings creating a diverse skyline. Flabby arms and soft middles are in abundance with a few caterpillar-like spines sprinkled in for good measure. Excitement is hegemony here.
Then the kids are off, like little factory candies on a conveyor belt. They’re jumping, hovering in the air, gravity pulling them back to earth like balloons on a string. Everyone at the pool, regardless of age, is now enthralled, even the adultier-adults. We’re waiting for the thunderous clap of bellies meeting water — who among them, everyone wants to know, is the Thor Ragnarok of the pool. Booing begins for ones who chicken out at the last minute, doing flips in mid air, landing feet first. There are no hurt feelings, though, the boos are polite, somehow encouraging. Like, okay, maybe next time, buddy.
“Kids are great,” I say to no one in particular, and start cracking myself up, as I boo the children.
I am completely enthralled by their spontaneity, their ability to just go for it. No one made any plans for two weeks from now or texted before the phone call, there isn’t a single screen in that line. The kids even left the house. Water, it turns out, really is the key ingredient to life.
“They are something,” a woman in a paisley one piece says to me. “Definitely crazy.”
Judging by the standards of adults, yes, children are deranged and entirely reckless, with their under-developed frontal cortex and spontaneity. Like, can you believe it, they talk to each other IN PERSON. Fucking psychos.
Participating in second-hand fun, I realize, is almost like experiencing joy myself — with its ability to crush my brain into a hard restart, wiping any and all depressive and repetitive thoughts that might be eating me alive through an all-consuming type of inaction. It’s not that adulthood is without its moments of flight and fancy, but the way we grow up and older feels devoid of spontaneity. Like we’ve gone and stopped belly flopping, not just in the pool, but into people’s lives. We’ve lost the thrill of interruption, of full minutes, hours, a whole day, of doing anything, that isn’t what we planned.
Most of this is due to the enormous amount of hours we work and the lack of childcare options this country persists in offering, and many are dealing with aging parents in need of care. But it’s more than our soul-sucking jobs and inflation that might be keeping us from feeling like we’re really living.
Over the past two decades, It turns out, color has been disappearing from the world. From the walls and carpets in our homes and apartments, the architecture of fast foot joints, and even the paint jobs of the cars snarling roadways with traffic. The lives we’re leading don’t just feel like an episode of the Twilight Zone, they look like one too. Our cars are gray, white, black and silver, same for our walls and carpets. Color, for all intents and purposes, has left the building.
It’s like we’re living inside a mid-century television set. Or some dilapidated country full of cubes and squares, made intentionally shitty so the “metaverse” looks exciting by comparison.
But it doesn’t have to be this way, we can just go swimming—belly flop right into the lives of our friends with a phone call, paint a wall this week, wear an actual color. We can live our most okayest lives a bit bolder, more dads on the diving board. We’ve still got it. We just have to take the first step and live a little.
Currently:
Reading: The School for Good Mothers
Watching: They/Them (Peacock)
Listening: Open Mouth, Open Heart // Destroy Boys
Carting: This series of Bikini Bottom totes (for all size booty cheeks)
Wearing: Dia & Co had me at kimono with pink pom-poms
Saving: It’s Getting Harder to be a Woman in America
Share Flop Era with the kind of person who really needs that upcoming pumpkin spice drop or so help them, they’re gonna NEED A WORD with August.