Loose Leaf Notes

The pool wasn’t busy the last time I was there. With so many empty lounge chairs to pick from, I made a couple of false starts before making my final decision on which one would be my base of operation. Ironically, it’s a lot easier to choose a lounge chair when the pool is crowded and I know which only remaining one is mine.
I enjoy listening to the young teenaged girls – still young enough to walk all the way over to the other side of the pool to get money from their mothers when they want a candy bar or ice cream, but old enough to be talking about shaving their legs.
One girl tells the group the same thing I heard when I was their age, something I’ve come to suspect is an adult attempt to get girls to hold off shaving. “If you shave your legs before all the hair comes in, you’ll get rough stubbles,” she reveals to the attentive group of four.
Another has a secret the rest are trying to pry out of her. It has something to do with a boy.
Now I’m in the water because it’s time for the “adult swim.” I wonder if I’d enjoy swimming nearly as much if the concrete that holds the pool water was painted any other color but blue. The girls have hung large colored beach towels between the lounge chairs and the fence to make a private tent that they’re sitting under. But I can still hear them talking when my slow breast stroke laps take me to their side of the pool.
The new subject is unappealing school cafeteria food. The blonde girl, who apparently is already up at the high school says, “…pizza and chicken nuggets everyday.” By the sound of her voice, I can practically see her nose turned up.
Kids begin to line up along the edge of the pool, waiting to hear the blow of the lifeguard’s whistle, which will signal that they can go back into the pool. The girl’s conversation continues in hushed in tones now. I smile, as I glide in the cool clear water, remembering my own summer days as a girl and thinking, “Some things don’t change all that much.”