When I saw some of the examples of horrific temperatures around the world, one in particular caught my attention.
Tunis, on the northern coast of Africa, had a high of 118 degrees fahrenheit on Monday.
I can almost hear your response.
Well, duh. It is Africa, and to quote Sarah Palin, Africa is a very hot country.
Yes, it is — a hot continent — and Tunisia has some hot summers, but it is also on the Mediterranean Sea and that moderates both summer and winter temperatures. In fact, Tunis is on almost the same latitude as the American coastal city of Norfolk, Virginia, and the all-time record high temperatore recorded there is 105.
Eight people I love live in Tunis, and thankfully six of them are in the United States this summer. The other two, my daughter and her husband, at least have the benefit of their own swimming pool to cool off when necessary.
There really are few things better in the summertime than having a swimming pool you can access whenever you want.
We’ve got one just a couple of blocks away here in Georgia.
As you can see from the picture, our community pool is a pleasant-looking one. Since we live in a senior community, there are no diving boards and the deepest part of the pool is only 5 feet deep. There’s a small section that isn’t shown in the photo where you can swim laps.
Mostly people just stand in the water, carry on conversations and cool off.
When I was in my teens, my family went to a swimming pool a quarter mile or so from where we lived.
It was a community pool, and we paid a fee each year to belong. I remember many hot afternoons hanging out at the pool, swimming and playing games in the water and getting out for five minutes every hour when the lifeguard called out “Rest period!”
If I remember correctly, I think once kids turned 16, they didn’t have to vacate the pool for those five minutes. It was always more pleasant during those few minutes that the little kids weren’t in the pool.
It was many years later before I ever swam in a neighborhood pool. In 2009 and 2010, we lived in a nice apartment complex in California. Our pool was much smaller than the one I used to visit. But it was still wonderful to get into the water in the late afternoon of a hot day and cool off some.
The only problem was that in the smaller pool, even a small number of children could make for an awful lot of splashing. The children tended to be a lot younger — at least half of them appeared to be 5 or 6 years old — and they got a lot of joy out of making the water fly.
They didn’t seem to play organized games. In all the times I went to our pool, I didn’t hear the words “Marco” or “Polo” even once. I suppose I could have tried to teach them, but as wary as kids are these days, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear one of them yelling “Stranger danger!” the first time I said anything.
Actually, I did have a brief conversation with one little boy. I was standing in water up to my shoulders at the edge of the pool, trying to keep my copy of John D. MacDonald’s “The Dreadful Lemon Sky” from getting wet.
He walked up to me along the side of the pool and asked me a question.
“Can I jump in right here?” he asked, gesturing to a spot about a foot from me.
I didn’t pause for a second. “No.”
He looked disappointed, so I explained to him that I didn’t want to be splashed, but if he went to the other side of the pool, the water was the same depth.
That’s what he did, but I still felt bad.
You kids get off my lawn.
Maybe I’ll go to the pool today, even if it’s only going to be 92 degrees outside.
At least most of the people there will have heard of Marco Polo.