Yesterday it was so hot here I decided to take the kids to the pool in the afternoon. I wasn't the only one with that brilliant idea. My three neighbors were also there with their kids. During the hourly ten-minute "safety break," during which the lifeguards make sure there are no stray kids floating at the bottom of the pool, adults are allowed to swim child-free. No splashing, no screaming, just peaceful refreshment.

One of my neighbors suggested we race eachother down the two huge curling slides that go up about three stories - with all the kids sitting this one out there was no line. Well, after one race we were hooked. We spent the next eight minutes perfecting our form and race strategies (Frances insists the key to speed is to arch your back so just your heels and shoulders are touching the slide, I think the key is to get on your side to reduce friction). While two of us were racing down the slides, the other two were running up the stairs as the line of waiting ten year-olds heckled us with cries of "No running!" The lifeguards never berated us, we're almost twenty years older than they are, but these kids had no problem dishing out the advice their parents are always more than willing to give them.

Of course, our own children waited down below, cheering us on, and we reveled in their enthusiastic support. Every time we got to the bottom we'd check to make sure our assets hadn't fallen out of our bathing suit tops on the ride down, that our bottoms were still covering our bottoms, and then look to our panel of elementary and pre-school judges to see who'd won. In those fleeting moments while we waited to see who'd be crowned the queen of the slide, I felt like Lance Armstrong competing for the Tour de France - if only the Tour de France required no physical exertion, lasted just long enough for a lifeguard to put more zinc on his nose, and the ubiquitous yellow shirt was replaced with a Hawaiian print bikini.