With the arrival of Memorial Day weekend, and with it the return of recreational swimming in neighborhood and community pools across America, a curious thought crossed my mind. Whatever happened to adult swim?
It’s a memory now as distant as the taste of Steak-umms fresh off a snack bar’s greasy grill, or the saccharine sound of Styx playing over a pool’s tinny loudspeakers. So I researched the whereabouts of this strident staple of summer from my 1980s youth.
For the uninitiated, the rule required kids under the age of 18 to find dry land for 15 minutes of each swimmable hour so that adults could swim without fear of taking a waterlogged Nerf football to the head. The restriction fell out of favor as courts began finding the practice discriminatory based on familial status under the Fair Housing Act.
This suburban father of five was never consulted on the issue litigated for his purported benefit. Had I been, I’d have argued that reasonable people can disagree over the safety of high-dives, the technique for largest can-opener splash, or the efficacy of pink cloud micturition-deterrence, but whatever you do, do not get rid of adult swim.
Adult swim was not just good for me. It was flat-out good for America.
These are not rantings of a disgruntled Gen Xer who looks to his own kids and says, “I had to put up with it, and now so must you.” Far from it. Not only did I greatly if rebelliously enjoy the challenge posed by the adult swim in my youth. It made me the man I am today.
The joy came from evading the rule, as my 18-month-younger brother Jack and I often did when the dreaded whistle blew. We’d each find a kickboard and stand hidden under it, creating tiny air pockets for breathing. Then we’d stealthily move about the pool on our tiptoes, like a pair of rudderless oil tankers.
Our subaquatic interloping, the proverbial futile and stupid gesture, wasn’t exactly fun. But it was empowering to rage against the machine and do something MacGyver-like — with the limited tools at your disposal — about a situation you didn’t like. If you got caught, you served your time honorably and without carping under the lifeguard’s chair.
Delight in outfoxing the lifeguard aside, consider the attitude that adult swim encouraged among adolescents. It didn’t get better than free swim on a hot day. Yet even here, in summer’s best hours, we were trained to accept that for every 45 minutes of joy, 15 minutes of pain was baked into the cake. We didn’t need Mick Jagger to understand that you can’t always get what you want.
This taught me always to take the bitter with the better in life. No good thing is all rose and no thorns. The sooner you understand this, the happier you become. Our spiritual adviser simply had zinc oxide on his nose, wore reflective Oakley sunglasses, and said “dude” a lot.
I see now how even the poolside adults, like a flock of starlings in murmuration, were in on the teachable moment. Few partook in adult swim, yet in refraining they taught my generation something very important. Life isn’t fair, but luck changes for the better when you’re patient.
That settles it. This summer, let’s bring back adult swim to neighborhood pools. I shall delight in watching Finn and Jack, my two youngest sons, grow in red-blooded American resiliency as the whistle blows. And if I see two kickboards floating in the middle of the pool, I won’t rat my boys out to the lifeguard.
Mike Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte, N.C.
