Having come into a large sum of money, I spent a significant amount of it on an extravagance known as an “Endless Pool.”
In case you’re not familiar with the name, an Endless Pool is, in effect, a small pool which propels water toward you as you swim, offering resistance to your forward motion and the illusion that you are gliding straight ahead toward your goal.
It is the aquatic equivalent of jogging in place.
The Endless Pool is, of course, larger than a hot tub, yet at only one tenth the length of an olympic-sized pool, it is an odd spectacle, an easy source of ridicule by my friends.
They call it “The Short Pool,” perhaps made in reference to the small school bus that, at one time, took the handicapped students to school. I do not find this reference amusing. I find it distasteful and rude.
And yet I fear they are correct.
Their mockery is laced with truth. I spent a small fortune on something I now associate with strangeness and misfortune. The pool and the bus have nothing in common except their size, but I cannot help but link the two in my mind. Me, a fool parted from his money, and the children on that bus who clap their hands loudly when someone mentions the word poopy.
Such an association is absurd and unfair to those children on the short bus. But I do feel as though I’ve made a huge mistake and I’m stuck with this pool forever. The pool one could not swim in were the power to one day go out.
