Fancy Dive - L.

Lately, I've realized that while my mind may be in its 20's, my body sure ain't.

Friday after dinner, my Long-Suffering Mate and I took our boys to the rec center pool in our neighborhood. It's a great place, with a huge outdoor pool and two indoor pools. We splashed in the outdoor one until it closed and the lifeguards moved everyone inside to the other pools. One of the indoor pools, the competition-sized one with the lap lanes, also has two low diving boards. Our older son, G1, who is six, loves them. He's discovered cannonballs and the freedom of defying gravity. Somehow, Dave and I got roped into the board queue with G1 and a gaggle of other kids his age.

I volunteered to go first while Dave kept an eye on two-year-old G2, who had appointed himself official commentator at his post on the pool deck. At the go-ahead from the teenaged lifeguard, I climbed the three steps up and savored the feel of the no-skid metal under my feet. My hands on the rails, my mind flashed back to countless summers spent at the country club pool, where I enjoyed this same view, a blue-green strip of board extending into the horizon, over shimmering blue water, the smell of chlorine, the chill of the air against my wet skin. Thus invigorated, I took off down the board, heading towards a glorious jacknife. At the edge, I shifted my forward momentum into a downward bounce, jumping up and slamming both feet down. The board twanged and dipped down. . .down. . .down. And then just when I thought there was no recoil, it reversed and went up. .. .up. . .up, flinging me up and out over the pool with the force of a wad of potatoes twanged out of a spoon. I windmilled and twisted madly as I flew, trying to gain control. My eyes saw the ceiling, the far wall, then a rapid mass of blue. My face hit the water the exact same time the rest of me cracked down. The physics of surface tension were never demonstrated so clearly to me as at that moment.

My downward momentum carried me almost to the bottom of the deep end, where I finally came to rest in a suspended haze of tiny bubbles, my torso, arms, thighs, and one foot stinging smartly.

"Damn," I mused. "That board's got a hell of a lot of spring in it."

"Ahem!" spoke up the Bitch in the Back of My Head (you know the one--she looks like Bjork in a pink twinset, with a bow in her hair, and tells you you're really going regret ordering that last martini.)

"Ahem," she cleared her throat,"It's not that the board is springy. It's that you bring a lot more to the board than you used to."

I tacitly ignored her, preferring to sulk near the bottom of the pool, where, for a brief moment, I entertained the idea that no one had seen my ignominious exit, especially since there wasn't anyone else in the depths with me. But then I realized lingering too long risked a 'rescue' by the overzealous, gangly, pimply-faced, metal-mouthed teenager in the lifeguard stand. The thought that things could get worse spurred me back up to the surface, stroking over to the ladder, pretending as if nothing had happened and everything was just FINE, thank you very much.

I hauled my bright-pink, still-smarting body up the ladder and out of the pool.

"That was just terrible," intoned Dave, his words punctuated by giggles from the kids in the board queue, my boys among them. I straightened my back indignantly, a retort forming in my head. But I knew it was futile. I gave up and drooped.

"Yeah. Apparently I have a hell of a lot more inertia than I used to." I looked down at my feet, and noticed the board had had the last word, bloodying 3 of my toes on the way out.

"Oh, hell, no," hissed the pink twinset Bitch in my cranium. "you're 38 years old. You don't quit."

"Damn straight, I don't, " I muttered, and dripped my way over to rejoin the diving board queue.

"Mommy!" My 6-year-old was thrilled. "You're back! Are you going to dive again?" He bounced up and down.

"Nope," I said, "This time I'm doing a cannonball."