fire and water

Everyday I ride passed the Dunn-Loring Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department down on Gallows Road. Everyday I laugh at the sign out front advertising “Non-smoking Bingo. Mondays and Wednesdays. 5pm.” Those fire guys are hilarious…or ironic.

So here’s the story on swimming pools that I promised a few weeks ago. Being a kid, in certain circumstances, never changes. Whenever I’m at the pool with the boys I notice that even this generation of children have mastered the art of I’m “walking-not-running-but-still-looking-like-the Monty Python School of Funny Walks” run. Every single pool that has ever been open for public use has “NO RUNNING” painted all over the deck. Generations of 16 to 20-year old lifeguards have tooted their whistles and hollered out “sssslllloooowwww down!” To which the kids simply convert to an even goofier looking run / walk and snapping of leg joints. Attempts by the youth of America to circumvent the no running rule at the pool clearly led to the creation, and eventual inclusion, of speed walking at the Olympics. I’ll take a nine-year old in the 100-meter version of a speed-walking race any day, especially if he has to pee and the pool changing room is far off in the distance. The other story; the boys and their friend, one of the many Montanos, dogpaddled to the edge of the pool near where I was minding my own business and reading because they wanted to sing me the new song they’d learned. I already knew what was coming since I’d heard them caterwauling this diddy across the waves over the last hour. Prepare yourselves…

“Mine eyes have seem the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured all the teachers,
We have broken all the rules….”

As G. fades out on that last lyric, since no one really knows anything beyond that, he yells at me, “Todd…isn’t that funny? We just made it up!” Some things will always be funny! The more I thought (and heard) the old standard I began to wonder about the process: if you’ve already tortured the teachers then I’m assuming you’ve broken all the rules. Just saying. As an aside, G. didn’t really believe me when I informed him yesterday that, yes, I did know how to play Stratego. It appears that the more modern game has swapped the numbers and ranks. In my day, the general was the lowest number and the scout the highest number - philistines. When you’re 9 the World began about nine years ago.

It’s so humid my curls are falling from my hair. It happens.

T.