I love Fairfax Pool. I love watching families playing together in the shallow end. I love going down the waterslide on my head and heels to reduce the drag from my swimsuit. I love basking in the sun after eight months of winter and eight days of spring and fall. But mostly, I love Fairfax Pool for helping my children make it to adulthood.

You see, summer is when my children are no longer separated by different classrooms for eight hours. They are also not separated by electrified razor wire in our home, since my wife vetoed that plan. No, they have too much time together. They get on each other’s nerves before the toaster even cools from their Eggo Waffles. I’d be battling writer’s anvil at the kitchen table when my thoughts would be interrupted by a ruckus upstairs. Ian was throwing his Noah’s Ark wooden animal playset at Claire’s locked door. Each toy was tossed two-by-two. Two chattering pings for the squirrels and two trumpeting thumps from the elephants. I knew I had to get upstairs before the Ark itself ran aground.

I was mad at the interruption of my awesome, possibly Pulitzer Prize-winning, writing. I always love my children but sometimes don’t like them very much. Short of campaigning for repealing Child Labor Laws, I had to come up with a way for my children to expend their energy and for me to expend my anger in a way that would not violate any local ordinances. Fairfax Pool.

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In his defense, I was a 6’4” man drowning in only four feet of water.

jim jeffries

author

At Fairfax pool, we would wade into the shallow end up to about four feet of water and play a game we called “catapult.” I would make a stirrup of my hands and go into a deep squat. Anna, Ian, and Claire would take turns putting their feet into the stirrup and I would throw them violently over my shoulder. Other parents would see this wonderful dad building lifetime memories with his children. They didn’t know my hidden motives. I really, REALLY wanted to toss my squabbling kids around. Fairfax Pool was the only safe, and socially acceptable, place to do that.

Well, one day was particularly bad. Ian had pulled all of the heads off of Claire’s Barbies, so Claire had duct-taped Ian to a load-bearing beam in our basement. Anna was calmly watching cartoons after picking the television lock we used to discourage video gorging. I had a lot of negative energy to disperse. At Fairfax Pool, my children have never flown higher nor splashed louder than that day. I had just launched Ian higher than Michael Jordan on his best day when I got double cramps in both my quads AND my hamstrings. Whichever way I bent my leg, it felt like rabid ferrets were clawing their way outward from my femur. I did a short “erk” and toppled over sideways.

I was going to drown. I looked up, and the water served as a lens to magnify the total indifference of the lifeguard to my plight. In his defense, I was a 6’4” man drowning in only four feet of water. And I was pretty sure his attention was focused more on people wearing two-piece bathing suits. But I could still envision the headlines in the Leader-Telegram if I drowned. Pretty embarrassing. So I crawled like a paraplegic hermit crab back to the edge of the pool. I was gasping like a beached flounder when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was my daughter, Anna.

“Papa, it’s my turn for catapult!”

I always love my children. But sometimes I don’t like them.