We all love a nice cool dip in the pool when it gets hot during the summer right? We just purchased a small "pop up/ easy set" pool, it's about 10 foot by 10 foot. My boys have really been enjoying it. Only thing is, right now I'm having trouble getting the water to clear up, we've had lots of rain storms. Another thing is my parents are having a fit and are afraid my boys will drown. :/

What are your thoughts?

• Do you own a pool?
• How do you keep your water crystal clear?
• Do you know how to swim?
• Should all children be taught to swim?
• If you don't own a pool or go swimming, how do you cool off in the summer?

I don't know how to swim. And now that I'm fully grown, it's much more difficult to teach me how to swim than it is to teach a toddler. I have a lifetime of not-swimming behind me, plenty of fear of drowning, and my body's not used to learning new stuff. So yeah, teaching kids is ideal. It's a vital skill.

Last summer my boyfriend tried to teach me to swim. Apparently teaching is not just something that anyone who knows how to swim can easily do because I did not learn. But I've made a new friend who life guards in the summer and teaches kids to swim, so she's promised to teach me since she has experience.

I'm not even going to mention my boyfriend's brilliant idea to carry me into the deep end. Except I just mentioned it. Anyway, he tripped and accidentally dropped me and I nearly drowned. And at the time I didn't realize it was an accident, so as I was flailing and gasping (water was much higher than I am tall), the only thing I could think was "what the FUCK, man?"

I don't know how to swim either. My dad has always been afraid of water or pools in general so we never learned how. I wish we had.

Oh my! That sounds very scary!! I would have probably drowned, I don't get why people think it's a good idea to throw someone into the deep end thinking they will learn how that way. How does that teach you how to swim? I think it just makes us more afraid.

Originally Posted by Cherry Who?

I don't know how to swim. And now that I'm fully grown, it's much more difficult to teach me how to swim than it is to teach a toddler. I have a lifetime of not-swimming behind me, plenty of fear of drowning, and my body's not used to learning new stuff. So yeah, teaching kids is ideal. It's a vital skill.

This. This is the exact reason I have yet to learn to swim. Also... EVERYONE and their grandmother wants to teach me to swim... Im not 100% how well any of them would be able to pull it off though. lol

I can float alright, but I can never tell if I'm moving myself at all when I kick my legs or whatever... It's like I'm not aquadynamic or something, I just sort of float and paddle about...

As for pools, in the winter they're too cold, and in the summer they have blazing sunlight all over them, crowds of people crowding around and groping about in them, and children peeing in them, so I generally dislike them.

Indoor pools are a different story, especially when it's just me and a couple of friends. I don't know, I'm just very pool-territorial or something...

Haha pool territorial. I'm like that too though. I won't go to the public pool. My dinky 3 foot one in the backyard is good enough for me.

I haven't been swimming in years. :( While I love the act of swimming, I don't enjoy ayything else that goes with it, really. The local pool, nope, the changing rooms, hell nope! Showers that are always boiling hot... No means to dry my hair properly (e.i. so I don't look horrific). Other people's kids being brats, douches aggressively swimming lengths and looking at me like I'm some kind of lower form of life because I'm swimming widths. The thing with people peeing in the water...

The pool here in town used to use so much chlorine that if I was in there for more than 20 minutes I'd start feeling sick and my eyes would be so sore. Now they have some kind of UV filter instead, but I just don't want to go.

Either way, it's less frightening than the ocean, yeah? I've never been attacked by a crab in a swimming pool!

Something to put on your bucket list then.

I'd love to see the beach someday, actually. Seems lovely, and definitely an experience I'd like to have at least once. But I wouldn't want to touch the water if I didn't know how to swim. So there's a nice to-do list, right? Learn to swim, visit a beach.

Somewhere I've posted about this, but I might as well mention it here, while we're on it...

I like the beach, but not for the water or sharks or jellyfish or crabs...

I've made a hobby of... please don't be too grossed out... collecting rare medical waste.

I go out with bags and gloves and pick through the trash on the beach, always with an eye out for something not already in my collection. Now, I don't mean like pieces of people, I mean like weird rubber things, various different kinds of needles and little plastic bottles and bits of apparatus.

Swimming pools rarely have such treasures surrounding them, though I did find a used heroin needle by a hot tub once... don't worry, I disposed of it properly.

*always keeps a receptacle for burning things handy*

That is very interesting, Vera!

I'd love to see the beach one day too.

I'm not as close to it as I used to be, but I do try to make an annual trip to the beach when I'm visiting the area. I only get the chance once a year, and it's always in the cooler months, so I never pass up the opportunity.

I think the beach is far more beautiful when it's not summertime.

Back on pools, I like them when it's not summertime too, because it makes it far more bearable in every way.

As in, it's cooler out, I'm not being burned red, and I'm the only one in the pool, lol.

At least then I know it's just my own pee. XD

You don't get too cold when it's cooler out? We get cold in the pool even when it's 90.

LOL

I have a rather cold-blooded side, I guess!

No, really, I'm like a human radiator most of the time, I generate my own warmth.

Doesn't mean I like icy water though... I don't go bathing in winter, but I like it in springtime or autumn.

I learned to swim at a young age at the local YMCA and grew up going to the community pool in my mom's neighborhood. Every child should learn to swim, it's a skill that doesn't take too long to learn but stays with you for life (and can most likely save your life).

We live a few hours from the Eastern coast, but I really don't like swimming in the ocean. I don't like the unpredictability of it and being tossed around in currents and waves, getting mouthfuls of seawater, I can't see what's in the water beneath me (unless you go to Florida, the worst state ever but they have the most beautiful beaches and crystal-clear BLUE water) and my brother was stung by a jellyfish several years ago so that was kind of the final straw for me.

Swimming pools don't have real sea monsters, the ocean does, so pools > ocean, at least for swimming in, lol.

We have our own pool, and the water is kept crystal clear by...filters, chlorine (once in 2 days), some kind of acid (once in a month) and vaccum, I think I learnt to swim when I was around 10-13. I still can remember my mum shouting and scolding me, and me crying inside the pool while trying to swim I can swim the whole year round, whenever there's no rain or too much heat as I have the same kind of climate the whole year round

I wish it was always mild here... we have like 2 months of cold, a couple of months of cool/warm, and the rest is just HOT. It's like you walk one block and you look like you wet your pants, or at least I do...

It's disgusting, and unbearable.

Oh well, it's better than nothing. XD

I know that feeling! I constantly have to touch my butt to remind myself that there isn't actually anything wet showing

Two words: black slacks.

It's like they were made for it, hiding sweat-crack.

Who knows, maybe they were...

Some patterns work well too, depending.

I finally figured out that I didn't have enough chlorine in the water. And that our filter will hold the little chlorine tablets so the water is clearer now. Though I need to shock it because it rained last night. Waiting to see if it is going to rain again today.

LOL, it's been raining all day here, I even lost internets because of it.

Every time it rains here, it goes out. For like, everyone.

I don't own a pool, but I may move to an apartment who does have a pool in their basement. I believe that children should be taught how to swim, since it may or may not help them. I haven't actually gone swimming in a long time... I'm usually at home now, haha!~ I just take a frozen drink or hide in my home when it gets warm.

I do agree that children should learn it early, I just don't like how frightening it can be for them. I still don't really know how to swim all that well, and I had lessons and everything. All I could manage to learn under the circumstances was basically how to stay afloat and tread water.

So much for my dreams of one day going scuba diving, I suppose. I can see it now, everyone's checking out the coral, and I'm still turning in little circles on the surface, trying to figure out how to dive down.

XD