I grew up in a poor neighborhood, so no one I knew had a pool. We didn’t even have a neighborhood community center with a public pool nearby, but even if we had, I wouldn’t have been able to use it because I couldn’t swim (and still can’t).
What we had instead were fire hydrants, and every summer as the mercury creeped closer to 90° some soul with a monkey wrench would open the hydrant up the street from my apartment. Kids of all ages, and some people who couldn’t rightly call themselves kids anymore, danced, shimmied, and dodged through the hydrant’s spray. You’d hear people curse under their breath as they drove up the street, especially if they couldn’t roll their windows up fast enough to avoid being hit by the flow, or by buckets of water thrown their way intentionally when they were yards away from the hydrant.
I wasn’t ever allowed to play in the hydrant as a kid. I never understood why, but my mom made sure I never donned shorts and a tank top and doused myself under the deluge. She even had a couple of neighbor ladies pull sentry duty on those days when she couldn’t watch me herself.
When I saw these young girls playing in the fountain at Queen Elizabeth Park last week, I was reminded of the shouts and raucous laughter I heard on warm summer days as I watched the fun from my bedroom window. When I saw them playing it was all I could do to keep from tossing off my shoes and jumping in myself and finally experiencing to me what seemed like the epitome of simple, childlike joy.
