And the pool remained clean

My high school chemistry teacher once shared with our class something that he told his son: that if he felt the urge, it was okay to pee in the pool. So the next time the urge hit, his son did just that. He climbed out, stood on the edge, and peed into the pool.

- - -

When Gary and I were first married, we had a dog named Obie. One Saturday afternoon we took him to a local dog park to run around and burn off some of that excessive Australian Shepherd energy. Thankfully, it was crowded that day. It made it easier to temporarily disown him and play dumb when he lifted his leg on a poor, unsuspecting woman. "Who, him? He's not our dog!"

- - -

My freshman year of high school, I stayed after school several times a week as part of a creative problem solving team. One afternoon, as we sat on the floor in a circle, someone shared a funny story that apparently was so funny to me that I... wet my pants. (Yes, I was in high school. No, let's not go there right now.) In my utter humiliation, I tried to blame the dark spot on the floor on the fact I laughed so hard I drooled an entire puddle onto the carpet. Mmm-hmm. Sure, Angie. Is it any wonder one of the girls called me "Drool" until the day we graduated?

- - -

Over the weekend, something happened that brought all three of these stories to the forefront of my mind in a split second.

Now, I'm going to change the names of those involved to protect their innocence.

We joined some friends at their community pool to celebrate Gary's birthday last Friday. The lifeguard blew her whistle and we all begrudgingly exited the water to reunite with the 99-degree temperatures and munch on some snacks. So there I was, sitting on my lounge chair with my kids and Gary and our friends flanking me on both sides. Emmmmmma (name changed for anonymity's sake) was standing in front of me, gazing out at the empty waters when suddenly, a stream began falling straight from between her legs down to the patio.

"Emmmmmma!" I shrieked. "WHAT on earth are you DOING?!"

With no shame, she slowly turned and non-chalantly said, "Nothing."

"Did you just PEE?????!!!?!" I calmly asked.

"No," she said, with a straight face. "My hair was dripping."

Wow.

She peed AT the pool. I can't disown her. She blamed it on her hair.

Gary and my friend and I just all looked at each other in disbelief and then started to laugh. What could we do? We were speechless.

I immediately got up and used a squirt gun (in conjunction with about 22 trips down to pool to refill it) to rinse the patio and redirect the, um, excess water from Emmmmmma's hair into a nearby drain. When one of our little friends asked if I was trying to wash off the tiny speck of bird poo which was nearby, I quickly confirmed that yes, that's exactly what I was doing.

After watching me work like a mad woman without ever removing the bird poo, he finally took the water gun from me, looked at me like a dummy and said, "If you want to get it off, you have to actually spray the water right ON the bird poo." And away it went. Silly me.

So what would you have done? Disowned your kid? Laughed? Scolded her? Joined her? After we laughed, I reminded her that she's SIX and is big enough to not do that. And then I left it alone, and silently acknowledged in my mind that she is most definitely my daughter. *sigh*

(Or, I mean, someone's daughter. Because obviously I changed names and relationships to protect the innocent.)