It was a soggy triple play for Samantha. Sunday, our daughter actually spent time in three different pools. First, she and little brother Harrison, went to our neighborhood pool for awhile. Then, they went with mom to her fitness joint and played in that pool. Finally, she rounded out the day by going to a friend's neighborhood pool. About 50% of her poolside interest has to do with being in the water. Another 50% is purely social. The last 50% is because she bought a new swimming suit with her babysitting money and likes to show it off. (Yes, that adds up to 150% but, if you've ever watched my weathercasts, you know that I'm not good with percentages.) Monday, Samantha and Harrison went back to the neighborhood pool. She stayed all afternoon with her friends while Harrison left that pool and went to another one with one of his friends. By Tuesday morning, they both looked like cute, tan, little prunes.

Our two older boys don't go much anymore. It's not that they're too cool for the pool. But, they are very busy with work and summer projects. Our oldest, Alex, did walk down with the little kids once this season. He didn't jump in. He took along his laptop and watched on-line videos of people swimming. Taylor has a little Howard Hughes thing going on. Not in terms of his bank account...because if that were the case I'd be getting the car insurance money he owes me. Sorry. Off topic. No. Taylor is concerned about germs. He refers to the swimming pool as a giant Petri dish. "Why would I want to swim in someone's bath water?" is his usual response to an invitation. It's no big deal now, but if he starts letting his finger and toe nails grow and starts picking things up only while wearing latex gloves, we'll intervene. If his bodyguards allow us into the penthouse and he's done watching Ice Station Zebra.

They used to go. Once, when Alex was about three, I was walking with him through the shallow end when we both noticed a woman, holding a little girl, circling us like a grinning shark. The circle got tighter and tighter until they were right up to us. "I watch you every morning on TV," said the mom. Before I could say thanks, three-year-old Alex piped up with "Well, he's not on TV now, is he?!" The woman looked horrified. I laughed that nervous little twitter we all get when we know things have gone south in a hurry. "Sorry...he's just a little...uh...shy," I stammered. After we made it back to the side of the pool, I tried to explain to Alex that daddy needed every viewer he could get! I whipped out the latest ratings that I always carry just to prove it. Of all the kids, Alex was always the most uneasy with the whole "strangers talking to you" part of TV. He was around the same age, three, when I was up in Dekalb, Missouri taking part in a school fund-raising variety show. My wife was seated in the audience with Alex and little Taylor. While I was being stupid on stage, a kindly woman turned to Alex and said "That's your daddy up there on that stage!" Alex responded "No. That's Joel Nichols up there on that stage." For him, daddy was reserved for different places and times...like the pool on a June day.

I have accompanied the little kids a couple of times this year but I don't get in the water very much. In fact, as I get older and pudgier, I am starting to appreciate those old-fashioned, full body bathing suits you see in the beach photos from the early 1900's. Note they were called "bathing suits" not "swimming suits." Swimming suggests strenuous or, at least, playful otter-like activity. Bathing brings to mind just lounging in the H2O like a lazy hippo. I used to do that but now I tend to sit in the upright chair on the side of the pool like a school marm. Actually getting in the water exposes my widening bald spot and widening bod spot.

It wasn't always that way. In fact, I spent most of my summer afternoons, as a kid, at the outdoor pool which was about a half a block from my house. In my teen years, I worked there as a lifeguard. Now, I never had a typical lifeguard physique. I was never Baywatch...more like Baywhat? But, I still felt semi-cool sitting in the high chair, whistle around my neck, bellowing "Slow down...no pushing...one on the board at a time...okay, that's it, you're out of the pool for five minutes...." To the small children, I was a force to be reckoned with but for kids my own age or a little older, I was not exactly a Poolside Patton. I was impressed with how talented the older ones were in expressing their complete contempt for my Barney-Fife-esque authority, through gesture and word, in just the short time it took them to leap from the diving board into the water. They were concise yet passionate as they plunged.

Lifeguards also had to make sure all the female swimmers were wearing swim caps. Now, this was during a hair era..or haira...when men and boys had some pretty long locks of their own so we always had questions about that cap policy. Finally, in a giant step for feminism, the female hair cap rule was sunk. Yes, it was only fair. Still, I can't help but think that, somewhere out there, Esther Williams was a little melancholy.

In addition to keeping an eye on things, we also had to clean the showers (if there had been a black market for used nose-plugs, I'd have been a rich teenager) and make sure the chlorine levels were okay in the pool. We didn't really have any official, scientific device for that last part. If there were sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in the murky green we didn't have enough chlorine. If every kids' eyes looked like a bad flash photo and every swimming suit came out of the pool bleached white, we knew we had too much chlorine. Every hour, we would whistle everyone out of the pool. It was during those times that the guards could go in for a cooling dip. However, it was also during those periods that we tested little swimmers to see if they could be allowed in the deep end. The deep end was, obviously, where the diving boards were and where the truly serious games of Marco Polo took place. The challenge was swimming the entire length of the pool...with everyone else watching. Some kids sped across like a speed boat at The Tommy Bartlett Ski, Sky and Stage Show. Others dog-paddled their way to glory. A few really struggled. But, if they made it, they were officially "Deep-enders." Almost always, after the "everybody back in the pool" whistle blew, one of the new deep-enders...usually one of those who really had to fight to make the crossing...would immediately head for the high dive. Climb bravely up the ladder. Inch their way out to the end of the board and, then, start to cry. We rescued far more people from the high dive than from the water.

Well, those days are long gone and my willingness to expose others to my expanding waist and hair lines is at zero. I remember not long after our second son was born and I had gained several pounds of sympathy baby-weight, a local DJ told me, on the air, I was looking more and more like a stuffed sausage. Being from Wisconsin, at first, I took that as a compliment. Looking back I know it wasn't meant in that vein, but the guy had a point and, today, I'm afraid if I did go to a pool wearing only my bathing suit, the folks from Johnsonville would be after me, hoping to snare the world's largest bratwurst. I maybe a brat from time to time but I'm not a brat.

In fact, my most memorable Kansas City pool moment didn't involve a swimming suit at all. No, I'm not talking about some midnight skinny-dip in the J.C. Nichols Fountain. I keep telling people that wasn't me. No, I mean the time, in the summer of 1988, when I was doing a feature story about hot jobs in KC and decided to end the whole shebang by jumping into the Quality Hill Apartments pool while wearing my gray three-piece suit. At first the photographer wanted no part of such a stunt. He was a serious journalist and it was painful enough having to work with me, let alone be dragged into something so silly. Finally, I talked him into it. It was, clearly, a one-take proposition. Staring into the camera, I said something profound like "Well, if this hot weather is getting to you, there is one sure way to cool off" and leaped into the water, surfacing to say "Joel Nichols KMBC Nine News." It has been almost 20 years now and folks still come up to me and say "Aren't you the jerk who jumped in the pool with all your clothes on?" How's that for lasting water-related fame? Take that, Mark Spitz!