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Sunday, May 4, 2008

Boys Will Be Boys

When I was a little girl, I was a fish! You couldn't keep me out of water! I recall one evening in my great uncle's house in New Hampshire where I occupied myself for a few hours playing in his antique sink, just letting the water run over my hands. I was the kid who purposefully stayed in the middle of a pool so mom and dad couldn't come retrieve me... well, they could, but I knew they didn't want to come in the pool and they'd most likely just plead with me at the rim. I'd stay in until I was a prune, and even then I'd still want to swim some more! Now a days, I still love to swim but it has changed. Swimming now consists of either a work out- swimming laps or water aerobics, taking a cool-off dip when sun bathing gets too hot or just sitting/floating around and chatting with other floaters/friends. I sometimes get to thinking about how I would "play" for hours and looking back I find myself wondering how I could possibly entertain myself for that long.
Well, I got a glimpse of my childhood obsession to "play" today. We hung out at a friend's house who had us over for a pool party/barbecue and I realized that guys really don't ever grow up! haha. Of course they started with throwing unsuspecting victims into the pool and quickly moved into the plethora of competitions. I will proudly say that I was able to clinch one title today... "Notch" and I had a volley of 80 (topped the previous "record" held by John and "Lucky" by almost double- they had 42) with a little paddle ball set. That was my only event. The guys had competitions to see who could catch a football when diving off the board... then catching the football while doing a front flip... then back flip. They had a distance competition- kind of like a water balloon toss, but this was to see who could catch the pineapple chunks in their mouth as far away from each other as possible... this resulted in a few mouth open pool dives to try and stay in the game. Then, of course back to the football toss game. This time, with more guys they each ran off the diving board and threw it to the next guy in line jumping in. I was exhausted watching them but smiled from the memories of the silly games that kids play. The competitions finally ended (this is perhaps the difference between kids and grown men) when the rough play resulted in an injury and the old guys couldn't keep up and called it quits.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to admit, I held my breath when I first read about your 'competition' until you said it was just paddle ball. I could just see my pregnant daughter doing a double twisting forward sumersault dive off of the board while tossing a football.
It seems to me that your posting supports the well known concept that pilots never really grow up, they just get more expensive toys.

Anonymous said...

It looks like I may get to join in the jackassery soon enough...

Anonymous said...

Looks like great fun was had by all! And I'll bet there was plenty of good food during the breaks!!! : ) And yes, you were ALWAYS a fist!!!If I couldn't find you, I just needed to check the bathroom and you'd likely have a chair pulled up to the sink playing in water! First trick was keeping you out of the toilet!!!

Anonymous said...

OOPS... upon rereading, I suppose you could be a fist????? but for sure you were a FISH!!!!! : )