Pool

  The air is cooler as soon as you step into the building and there is the faint smell of chlorine and the weird echoing you get when you put cement and a lot of water together. The moment before you jump into the pool you can see the small children floundering and the bored life guards and the very cool high school girls in bikinis who don't want to jump in because they just curled their hair and put makeup on. And then you jump in and the cold water swallows you and even though your body is surprised you still push of the bottom and come up gasping. As soon as you start swimming you realize that you forgot your goggles and you get out and you have water in you nose and ears and everything seems quieter and cooler. And when you jump back in there's the quiet still surprising moment when you can see a different world where the light is visible and blue and you can see all the slow motion movement of people in water and the feeling of being able to float in the middle without touching anything else and being able to pull your self with your own body. Its almost as good as flying. When you come back up you cant smell any thing and your nose hurts but being in the water is much better than being in the heat. And you can fling your body down the slide and lean as it curves and try to go as fast as you can until you see the water rushing at you and you plug your nose. And when you leave you feel the sun warming you body, reaching for you as soon as you walk outside again.