Swimming In A Sweater

When I was a little girl my parents threw an anual pool party in their backyard, and every year I experienced something new, the least of which was witnessing the change in adult behavior as the evening wore on. Neither of my parents drank, so I just thought all their friends were naturally funny and extremely clumsy. The year I grabbed a soda from the cooler, swallowed a huge gulp and almost choked was the year I realized not everything in the coolers was soda.

A few years before my very first taste of alcohol was the year I ran to my mother dripping wet and so hysterical it took her ten minutes to calm me down enough to understand the situation.

"I was in the pool! And...and...it got in! It got in!"

"What got in?"

"The monkey! The monkey!"

She wrapped a towel around me and lead me to the sliding doors. It takes a lot to make her laugh, but upon looking out to the pool, I thought someone had told her a hilarious joke I didn't hear.

"That's Jean's husband honey! He's just got a lot of hair on his chest." Then to the others who had witnessed, "Her father doesn't have a hair on his body!"

I was horrified and scared to death of him. His entering the pool ended my time in it for the next week. I was equally horrified when my mother related the story to me years later as we looked through the photo album and I pointed out the picture of a particularly hairy man in the pool.

"Ma, who is that? He's got on a sweater!"

I felt doubly guilty for my actions as a child and as an adult.