Breaking the Pool, Reliving the Past

When I was about 13 years old I ran away from home.

We had one of those floating chairs for our pool and an edge on the bottom of the chair was sharp. I had been warned about this by my parents: sharp edges = bad for vinyl pool liner. Keep chair in deep end of pool. But on this day, I either forgot, or chose to think that I could be careful enough not to cause any damage (I really don’t remember what I was thinking.)

I brought the chair over to the stairs and sat down in it, pushing off the side and floating into the water - and leaving behind a nice slit in the liner.

My parents were livid. And after lots of yelling and crying, I ran away to my best friend’s house a few blocks away. Of course, my mother knew where I was. How far could I go on foot? She came to get me and I remember my friend Carrie trying to tell her I was not there. Ha.

I was angry and embarrassed about cutting the liner. My parents got a clear patch for it, but the stairs into the pool were wide and white and that big ugly gash was just right there staring at us every time we stepped near the pool. There was no hiding it. It was there to stay, to remind me of my mistake.

Flash forward to present day. About a month ago,I inadvertently turned both water returns (where the water returns to the pool after going through the filter) to the “off” position. The pool filter is on a timer, so for a few days it was running - sucking water out of the pool - without anywhere to return the water back into the pool. Result? The water pressure forced the intake pipes to pop off the filter and the pump was running with no water flowing through.

I called the pool company to fix it. Talk about embarrassing. Once again, I felt like that teenager who ripped the liner - angry, humiliated, pissed off at myself. The pipes were replaced quite easily, but we really don’t know how much damage was done to the pump motor. But it runs for now, so I’ll worry about that tomorrow (or next spring).

I’ve been through a lot getting this pool into my rocky yard in my town with the permit requirements from hell. I thought the pool drama would finally end yesterday when the men came to close the pool for the season. But - no! The saga endures! True to form, the pool company once again came unprepared to finish the job. They needed to sink these metal discs into our wood deck to attach the winter cover, but they didn’t have the right size drill bit. Sigh. So perhaps some time next week, the pool will be officially, completely, 100% finished and I will be free of the pool company, the inspectors, the contractors…

Until the next time I break the pool.