Today we went to Dittmar pool. It is about 3 miles from our house, and it is currently in the running for my favorite free pool. Why? It has an entire section of the shallow end shaded. There was a hugely mixed crowd- from a tiny baby napping on his floatation device to this huge Mexican guy who had tattoos running from his chest all the way down his arm (Gavin tried to fool him by pretending to throw the water ball to him, but pushing it under the water instead of releasing it as a toss, and it was quite comical from my perch to covertly observe his game with my son.) – and everyone was friendly. I sat in the shade trying to learn Spanish from a book for almost two hours while he played “monkey in the middle” with two little kids. Then he flirted with a circle of women who were congregated around an infant that could not have been more than a month old. Then he conned me into tossing rings for him to dive for – and three, then five other kids joined in. I spoke in some of my seriously fragmented Spanish to the mother of two of the ring divers who had come to sit down beside me to watch her boys.

Oh how I love the south side.