That Afternoon At The Community Pool I Didn’t Post About
It’s the second week of July, 92 degrees out, and I took my 10-year-old Jax to the pool as a reward for finishing his summer reading packet two weeks early. I hauled my faded tote bag onto a cracked blue lounge chair that was sticky with leftover sunscreen from who knows how many people before me, and sipped lukewarm cold brew I’d grabbed at the gas station up the road. Half the ice had melted by the time I parked, so it was already warm before I even sat down. Jax has been obsessing over nailing a front flip off the high dive for two weeks, and he kept hyping himself up all morning that today was the day. His goggles have a snapped strap he taped over with neon pink duct tape, he refuses to throw them out, and his swim trunks are a hand-me-down from my cousin’s kid, a little too long in the legs, neon green that makes him impossible to miss from the chairs.
He bounced all the way out to the end of the board, I already had my phone out to record the whole thing, and then he twisted wrong halfway through. Belly-flopped so hard I heard the smack all the way over where I was sitting. Splash went everywhere, got half the people within 10 feet completely soaked. That’s when I noticed the four teens—three boys, one girl, all around 14 or 15—hanging on the edge right where the ladder comes down. They started howling. At first it was just the usual laugh anyone does at a big belly flop, right? I’ve laughed at bad flops too. But then it got mean. One of them started mimicking him, hunched over bouncing like Jax does before he jumps, another yelled “nice flip, dork” loud enough for everyone around to hear, another yelled that he should go back to the kiddie pool where he belongs. When Jax swam over to the ladder to get out, they just closed in, blocked the bottom step, wouldn’t move, just kept laughing and making stupid faces at him. I saw his smile drop right off his face, and he just froze there treading water, holding onto the edge, too scared to push past them.
Here’s the thing no one talks about: I froze first. My brain went completely blank. I thought, do I yell from here? Do I go get the lifeguard, who’s also a 16-year-old kid who’s been scrolling his phone this whole time? I haven’t been around a pack of teens like that since I was a teen in a pack, and I forgot how intimidating it is—all of them leaning into each other, loud, like they’re one big mean thing instead of four separate kids. I spilled half an inch of coffee on my white denim shorts when I stood up, and my flip flop got stuck in the sticky rubber mat by the pool entrance, I almost tripped over my own feet getting over there. One of the boys snickered at that, before I opened my mouth. My voice came out way louder than I meant it to, almost a yell, and all I said was “Move. He’s waiting to get off.”
They went dead quiet. Just stared at me. The girl, I recognize her—she bags my groceries at the Kroger on Main, she always holds the door for old people and remembers I get extra cream for my coffee—she actually blushed. She nudged the guy closest to the step, he rolled his eyes so hard his whole head moved, and they all drifted off to the other end of the pool, snickering quiet enough that I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Jax climbed up the ladder fast, his lips all pressed together like he was trying not to cry in front of everyone, grabbed his towel off the chair, and just said “Can we go get ice cream now?” I said yeah, of course, we left before I even finished that stupid warm coffee.
We got mint chocolate chip at the little stand by the library, he got rainbow sprinkles all over his hand and the passenger seat of my car. He fell asleep on the drive home, head lolled against the window, half-eaten cone melting a little in his lap. I sat in the driveway for 15 minutes after we got home, just sitting there with the engine off, thinking. People always post these big clean stories online about standing up to bullies, how you have to teach your kid to fight back, how you have to make the other kids apologize, get the school involved, turn it into a big teachable moment. But this wasn’t that. It was just 10 bad, gross minutes.
And I keep thinking about when I was 15, me and my friends did the exact same thing once. We were hanging out at the mall food court, a little kid tripped over his own shoelace right in front of us, dropped his whole corn dog on the floor, and we laughed so hard we snort-laughed, kept making jokes about it for 20 minutes. I never once thought about his mom standing off by the pretzel stand, watching that, hating us. Those teens weren’t evil. They were just stupid and young, that thing where you do dumb mean stuff to impress your friends that you’d never do if you were alone.
Jax wanted to go back to the pool yesterday. I almost made up an excuse, said it was too hot, said we could just get ice cream and go see a movie instead. I didn’t want to run into them again, I didn’t want to have to do that whole tight-chested thing all over. But Jax said he wanted to try the flip again, so I said okay. We went, and they weren’t there. I still spent the whole hour scanning the front gate every time someone walked in, anyway. Jax nailed the flip on his third try, came running over soaking wet, grinning so big his dimples showed, and I cheered like he’d won the Olympics. We got cheap hot dogs from the concession stand after, everything felt fine.
But I still think about that afternoon sometimes. It wasn’t a big deal, not really. No one got hurt, Jax doesn’t even bring it up anymore. But it stuck with me, that cold little feeling in my chest when I saw my kid treading water, too scared to climb out past a bunch of kids only a few years older than him. You don’t always get a big win. You don’t get to give a big speech that changes everything, you don’t get to teach anyone a lasting lesson, you don’t get a perfect resolution to wrap up and post. You just get to walk over, tell them to move, buy your kid an ice cream, and try again the next day. That’s all it is, most days. I still don’t know if I did it right. But that’s what we do, right? We just figure it out as we go.
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