A couple posts back I reprinted a quote from Vicious Victoria, or whatever she calls herself, about above ground pools and tramps representing white trash. I mean tramps, the kind you jump on trampolines.

If you have kids 8 – 14 years old, an above ground pool is a GREAT way to spend your money. I don’t feel the same about trampolines. Trampolines just don’t have the long lasting entertainment value. After a dozen jumps what’s left? Do you want a half dozen kids in your back yard on a tramp? Two seem to be the max at one time, so the others are pretty much bored, or arguing over who goes next.

I realize a kid 8 – 14 can dive in a pool and break a neck, but adults have been known to dive into 4 foot pools too. *ahem* me. So there are safety hazards.

But having the kids gather in our yard to swim, with limitations on the numbers, is better than having our kids at somebody else’s house doing whatever.

Plus: getting a teenage girl to babysit on Saturday and/or Sunday for hours while we played golf was a piece of cake. Back in the day, baking to a crispy golden brown in the real sun was the only way to get a tan. No chemicals, no tanning beds. It took hours of laborious laying around for days. It was hot work too. Being able to roll off the deck into a pool every few minutes made the teenage girls living next door very happy to babysit for us.

I actually enjoyed cleaning the pool too.

When it was time to clean the pool, I would tell the kids to make a whirlpool by everybody running in the same direction along the circumference of the pool. When four or six kids start running they can get that water into a nice whirlpool. Then we made a game out of jumping out one at a time so the whirlpool wasn’t slowed down.

How does that help cleaning the pool? All the hair, yes, girls with long hair exposed to massive amounts of chlorine for hours everyday, lose a lot of hair, and other debris – leaves, underwater toys, and beer bottles would be swept to the middle of the pool.

After the raging whirlpool was calm, I would ease myself in with the long hose and carefully vacuum a relatively small area!

No kids. Just me. Usually about 7 or 8 p.m. Then it was adult swim. Or adult float-around-on-air-mattresses, catching a smooch as we floated by each other.

I bet our kids were in the best shape of their lives during this period too. Literally hours splashing around ended with the total aerobic whirlpool exercise. They still stayed up until all hours during the summer, but they seemed to be much more mellow after swimming all day.

Don’t think those POOLS INSTALLED FOR JUST $499 have been lost on us.

If I just had somebody to jump in and make a whirlpool for me daily!