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“I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time.”

-Calvin, of ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ fame

            One of the best parts of my summer job is nap-time.

            Between the long hours of three-when-is-this-day-going-to-be-over-o’clock and four-only-two-more-hours-before-I-can-go-home-and-do-nothing-o’clock is the glorious sixty-minute-slot known as “Free Swim.” Since I am not a certified swimming instructor, and definitely not capable of teaching more than the most-basest form of doggy paddle to drooling six-year-olds, I am not legally required to watch the forty-seven screaming children, splashing around in the fitness center’s tepid lap pool. It’s not in my contract. So I sleep in my required green polo, khaki shorts sweatily pressed to my legs.

            The shaded cement is a welcome alternative to the serrated metal benches that my fellow counselors wait out the hour on, ore conducive to the coolness of the sunglassed sleep environment. So armed with only a pink fading kickboard (for stiff back support) and a thigh floatie/pillow (gross, I know), I lay down onto the damp stony mixture of apparently just smooth rocks and Elmer’s Glue, as obscene music blasts in my babapaulus ears, closing my eyes for a solid forty-three minutes.

            These forty-three minutes are sacred, the only way that I survive the day without transforming into a Mr. Hydian crank, forced to roam the lemonade-drenched linoleum floors of the camp room with a cackling snarl. And the other counselors know it. They sit, cradling paperbacks and conversations, quietly letting me be, and let me drift off into dreams of the far-off tomorrow night or the snows of last February or

            I forget. But that isn’t the point.

I have managed to allot myself a little less than an hour of peace, one hour squeezed into my spiral-bound planner between eating and yelling at children, forcing me to think, doze, and figure out life.

            But I have to admit: I miss the water. I haven’t been swimming as much as I should be for a two-bathing-suit-owner in the Texas summer and I’ve been lounging in the shade for far too long, it seems. The sting of chlorine always seems to help my brain synapses function more rapidly, more clearly, shocking my body into a type of submerged meditational, close-eyed semi-coma. Last summer, two summers, years ago I wrote

Wet

Anywhere but the pool, they said.

Don’t get me wrong, the party was just fine,

it was just so loud.

Even the faux stonework tried to get rid of the

squealing gossip and cracking giggles,

throwing it away into a ceaseless, pounding echo.

And that laughter seemed to

      bounce

                                                         bounce

                                bounce

between the walls of my brain.

I just couldn’t stand it anymore.

So with a dive and a thin swallow,

my world became quiet again (like

that last, breathless gasp between the loops of a roller-coaster.)

And so I just stayed there, exhilarated,

water soaking through my half-frayed shoelaces,

soaking through the swirling silence.

Anywhere but the pool, they said.

I don’t get invited to many parties.

            Well I’ve been getting invited to more parties since then, if my past, glasses-wearing self can believe it. But in the spirit of self-discover, tomorrow, I’ve impulsively decided, I’m bringing my swimsuit to work, ready to think and pray and live under the bubbling plastic jets.

            Or maybe not.

            Maybe I’ll just jump into the frothy waves of the lap pool, green polo, sweaty khakis and all, you know, for old time’s sake.