Really?
Yes, really.
What, you thought I was too prim and proper? Perhaps you assumed that, having covered so many high-dollar charity events in one of my several other incarnations at the paper, I was too hoity-toity, too chi-chi to hang out at the local water park?
Or maybe you just figured I was too old and, to refer back to last week's column, too curmudgeonly? Wouldn't be able to take the heat, the crowds, the splashing, cannonball-ing shrieking youngsters, the pool water that had to be teeming with ... uh ... cooties?
Yes, I was at the water park and no, I wasn't escorting any pre-pubescent charges.
This is what happens when someone loves being around water -- and in it, at least up to chest-high, anyway -- but for various reasons, lacks regular access to an unregulated-use swimming pool or hot tub and wants to get at least a few cents' worth of use out of the swim attire bought on clearance last year.
As much as I like beaches and pools, you'd think I could swim. But as I told my friend-girl Pam, as we stood in the wave pool at the park, I've got this love/fear relationship with water. Like her, I'm the poster child of multiple failed swim lessons throughout the decades. I can't get past that stubborn reluctance to dip my head below water.
The fear is there. But the love is, too. I find myself watching TV programs like The Blue Planet. I watch wistfully (by TV or in person) as those with no fear of water go para-sailing, snorkeling or jet-skiing. Looking on as small children slice through a pool with gusto ... and wishing once again that I could go back in time long enough to benefit from teach-a-baby-how-to-swim classes. Before the fear set in.
Anyway, after a recent cruise that was lovely but included no beach time, the aforementioned lack of pool access and a sense of urgency due to a cooler-than-usual summer that has gone by too fast ... yeah, I was ready to head to the water park.
When Pam and I got there, I did what all dutiful Facebookers do. I posted my location and who I was with.
"REALLY???????" responded one Facebook friend to whom I'd apparently conveyed the impression that I wouldn't be caught dead having an aquatic experience anywhere other than the south of France -- or at least the south of Alabama.
"OMG!" responded another friend. "WHERE are the cameras -- I would LOVE to see you catch a wave!!!!"
I, on the other hand, did not want to catch a wave. At least, not in the face. My head would be below water. Besides ... I might lose a chandelier earring.
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, I responded. Besides, the people-watching opportunities are priceless.
The water park scratches multiple itches. A nonswimmer such as myself can say she went "swimming," even though the swim experience might have just involved trekking back and forth between the Lazy River and the wave pool. The swim attire gets some use. And if I happen to want to glam up a suit with dangly earrings, necklace, animal-print sarong and jaunty headgear as if I were headed to the south of France, nobody's going to look at me as though I'd worn a toga to a board meeting. Thanks to those people-watching opportunities, the nonswimming water lover who's stuck at home has just as much social-media posting fodder as some human Flipper types diving in the Maldives. At the water park, one can arrive late, get in on a discounted ticket, be a water-wallflower, and still have a good time.
So again ... yes. Really.
It'd be nice to have a sophisticated experience at a fancy beach venue; nice to have the swim skills to do the accompanying ocean and pool some justice. But then I might miss somebody falling out of their double inner tube on the Rapids Ride.
Swim-up email:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 08/03/2014