There’s no fool like an old fool who tries to keep cool in a pool with granddaughters who prove it’s girls who rule.
That’s the lesson I learned from the little mermaids, whose aquatic exploits made me feel like a fish out of water.
My wife, Sue, and I were guests at the pool club where our granddaughters, ages 10 and 6, are members (along, of course, with their parents, who joined using liquid assets).
I hadn’t been in an Olympic-size swimming pool since approximately the 1996 Summer Games, in which I didn’t compete because I was already on the verge of decrepitude. Besides, if one of the events had been the dog paddle, I would have been beaten by our late pooch, Lizzie.
Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps I am not.
I’m also not a merman, the male equivalent of the mythical creatures my granddaughters pretended to be.
“You can be a dolphin,” the younger girl told me.
“You mean like Flipper?” I asked, referring to the cetacean star of the 1960s TV series of the same name.
A woman about my age who had overheard this exchange smiled and said to me, “You’re dating yourself.”
“No one else will go out with me,” I replied.
“Not even your wife?” the woman asked.
Sue, who was standing a few feet from us, pretended not to hear. Then she turned around and swam away.
Speaking of hearing, my left ear immediately became clogged, which in my case is known as water on the brain.
“Tilt your head and hop on one foot,” my older granddaughter instructed.
It worked so well that, five seconds later, my right ear became clogged.
But it didn’t detract from the fun I was having with the girls, who both proved to be champions in underwater ballet, the older one doing backward somersaults and the younger one doing pirouettes.
“You try it, Poppie,” my older granddaughter said, referring to the floating flip.
I got about a third of the way over before water went up my nose.
“Blow it out!” my younger granddaughter implored after I popped to the surface.
“I don’t want to get boogers in the pool,” I spluttered.
They both chortled. They did the same when I tried to do a handstand that was so bad, my younger granddaughter declared, “That was terrible!”
I couldn’t even get the hang of the pool noodle my younger granddaughter was using. She filled the foam tube, which has a hole in either end, and said, “Look, Poppie!”
When I looked, she blew water out of one end directly into my face.
I had better luck on a float that a woman named Margot let me try.
“Jump up and put your rear end in the bottom,” she said.
I noticed a pocket on the right side of the float.
“It’s for drinks,” Margot said.
“Like beer?” I wondered.
“Whatever you want,” she answered.
“At this point, I could use one,” I said.
Since the pool club is part of a marina, Margot asked if I have a boat.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Where do you keep it?” she inquired.
“In my bathtub,” I replied.
She chuckled and said to the girls, “You have the best grandparents!”
“Nini is nice,” the older one said, referring to Sue.
The younger one added, “Poppie’s crazy.”
I asked the lifeguards — a young man and a young woman who looked to be in college — if they ever had to save a geezer like me.
“Not yet,” the guy responded.
“I hope today isn’t the first time,” his partner said.
It wasn’t, even though I proved to be anything but Olympic material.
At least there weren’t any pooches to beat me in the dog paddle.
