the golden rules of peeing in the pool

BY CALEB POWELL

Since having children, my wife and I have fallen in love with the all-inclusive vacation. We sit by a pool, waiters and waitresses bring us drinks, and when we want a break from the piglets, we put them in daycare. However, our last vacation in Mexico (and first exclusively at an inclusive) set the stage for a little poolside confrontation. My wife and I lounged and watched our daughters play with 4-year-old Cody. Cody ended up gravitating toward and playing with Ava, also 4 and the oldest of our three daughters. To swim, Ava needs an inflatable ring just to paddle clumsily to and fro. Cody saw her struggle, boasted he could swim "all by myself!" then he darted to the deep end to frolic with his mother. Soon, Ava cried out that she had to pee, and my wife accompanied her to a nearby bathroom. When Cody returned, he asked why Ava had disappeared, and I told him that Ava had to use the bathroom.

Cody stood straight up in the shallow water and stated boldly, "Why doesn't she pee in the pool?"

"Because you can't pee in the pool," I said.

"Yes you can."

"But you shouldn't."

"My mother told me I can."

"No she didn't."

"Yes she did!"

"But you shouldn't pee in the pool. That's why we have a bathroom."

When I was a kid we had a local pool with one of those signs outside the boys and girls bathrooms: "We don't swim in your toilet. Please don't pee in our pool." I used mutations of this joke with my daughters. When they sat at the dinner table and made designs in the potatoes or started playing Lincoln Logs with their green beans I'd take their plate away, exchange it with a few Legos, and say: "Here, why don't you eat your toys?"

I therefore asked Cody, "Do you swim in the toilet?"

Cody stood unfazed and shook his head.

"Right, that's because you don't want to swim in water that someone pees in. You swim in the pool and go to the bathroom in the toilet."

Cody replied, "My mother said I can pee in the pool."

With this, he hurtled his body into the water and zoomed back to his mother's side. He swam amazingly well, and confirmed my oft stated belief in the inequality of the sexes, replete with superior male athleticism and inferior male intelligence. Then I wondered: What about his mother? Obviously this woman needed to rise to the standard of her gender.

My wife returned and I told her about the little varmint as Ava hopped into the pool. We were a little grossed out, but it was vacation; we could shrug it off and focus on our daughters, and we did so until Cody returned and announced, "Hey!"

He walked to the edge of the pool and triumphantly beamed. "I just asked my mom and she said it's okay. I can pee in the pool if I want!"  Then he jumped in and remained almost motionless for what seemed like 30 seconds. I looked at the water in front of the kid's shorts and almost saw an inversion of warm urine and cool water forming convection currents. I gave this matter a few seconds thought. The waitress placed a beer by my side as if on cue and I grabbed the glass, went into the pool, and trudged into the deep end where the mother leaned against the pool's edge.

"Hello. Um. I'm the father of Ava -- the girl Cody's playing with."

"Oh, hi," she said. We introduced. She hailed from Minnesota. As I live in Seattle, and it was December, we both agreed the weather in Mexico was a vast improvement from our homes. We exchanged parental pleasantries, but before we went overboard praising one another's cute damned offspring I observed, "Yes, Cody's an excellent swimmer. I'm impressed. One thing, though. He told me he could pee in the pool, and that you gave him permission." I then finished my beer in a few large gulps.

Minnesota Mom said, "Yes. So? The pool's chlorinated."

"Even so, what if everyone peed in the pool?"

"It's no big deal. They use a lot of chlorination."

Rather than lecture her about manners and bad habits, I scrunched my face and closed my eyes for a few seconds. I then splashed and pushed water in her direction.

"Ahhhhh. I just relieved myself, but don't worry, the water's chlorinated." I departed as expletives started to roll. I wondered if she had a large husband lurking, but I was more concerned on catching the waitress standing by my wife so I could order another beer. I returned, requested a Negra Modela, then told my wife of the chat with Minnesota Mom, as well as my departing act.

"You didn't really pee, did you?" My wife asked.

I smiled and said, "Of course not." (And this will be the version I'll tell my offspring.)

The mother and her son already had started to leave the pool area, hopefully the wiser. Yet for all that, what had I learned? Sophisticated logic confuses the hell out of me, the philosophies of "treat others as you would like to be treated" and "what comes around goes around" could cancel out one another. And "turn the other cheek" is nothing more than a platitude. But, I had a story for my daughters. I would tell them every aphorism has a time and place, yet these golden rules become morally ambiguous when applied to peeing-in-the-pool etiquette.

Caleb Powell lives in Seattle with his beloved wife and daughters. He has lived and worked in Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Guam, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and The United Arab Emirates. He is the author of The World is a Class (a guidebook) and a puzzle book for students of Chinese, Chinoku. Literary work is forthcoming or in various magazines, including The Baltimore Review, descant, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, The Los Angeles Review, Pedestal Magazine, Post Road, The Rio Grande Review, The Texas Review, Yankee Pot Roast, and Zyzzyva. Visit him at: Notes of a Sexist Stay-at-home Father.