Piddling at the Pool

We are a family of vampires.

Well, not quite, but I'm a red-head, my kids are blonde, and my hubby hisses at the sun.  Collectively, we are half a shade darker than an albino.  I should own stock in a sunscreen company.  In case you haven't ever seen me in real life, I'm pale.  My kids got screwed in the "healthy glow" department.

So when you see us at the pool, you are very likely to find us as the only family who swims in suits comparable to what our great-great-grandparents wore in 1902.  My kids wear shortie wetsuits, Scott swims in a rash guard t-shirt, and I wear *gasp* men's trunks with my tankini top.  OK, that's mostly because I have shaving issues, but we are easily the most covered up family splashing around.

Maybe that makes me stand out like a sore thumb or maybe that makes me seem crazy exotic, but whatever the case, it attracts lonely kids like moths to a flame.  The last three times I have been at the pool, clearly occupied with own little water nymphs, I have been approached (more like mobbed) by needy little boys.  Three different boys.

One was very, very interested in my kids' water toys.  Since we were three minutes from the pool closing, I let him use a water shooter.  Until I caught a woman, who was sitting on a deck chair, glaring at me like I was molesting her kid.  Thankfully, the last splash whistle blew and we were done for the evening.

The next was a kid right about Milo's age.  So five-ish.  He sidled up to me with some inane five-year-old chatter, then proceeded to splash my face with a full-on tidal wave.  I was wearing my contact lenses, so I turned my back to him because I didn't want him to wash my lenses right out of my eye.  The kid was clearly not a whiz with subtlety because he kept splashing my back.  Scott noticed and warned him, "You don't want to splash he, buddy, she'll splash you back."

But he continued to splash me until his mother FINALLY got up off her deck chair and told him, "Splashing is not nice.  Please leave her alone so I can get back to my book."

Hmm...  interesting pattern of kids not being supervised well by mothers who are working on their tans instead of keeping track of their progeny, huh?  Maybe the best pool moms are the palest?

The third kid was easily the most strange.  I do not know if he had a parent or guardian at the pool or not, but I was sitting on the edge while Violet was bouncing around me with our dive sticks when out of nowhere a kid, probably eight or nine, practically climbed into my lap with a broken inner tube. 

"Here," he said.

"Umm, that's not mine.  Is it yours?"

"Nope."

Cue uncomfortable silence as I sit there with a strange kid in my lap...

"OK, then.  I'm going to set this on the side in case someone comes looking for it and you can go back to your friends or mom or whatever."

As he sidled away, I looked over at a friend and she was clearly as puzzled as I was.  Why on earth would a kid that age just climb into a strange vampire woman's lap?  Beats me...  maybe it was a good thing that he didn't have a parent/guardian/adult paying close attention to him, because if I was his mom and had noticed him climbing on another mom, I certainly would have been suspicious.  Especially if she was as pale as the undead.