Tuesday, July 08, 2008

A Modest Pool Proposal




“WHHHAAAAA!”
Cringing, PP sighed inwardly. Goddammit. Why the hell would anyone bring their BABY to HER Vichy Springs Resort? Didn’t they know that she hates babies? Esp. when she wants peace and quiet and rest and relaxation in and around her pool?



What is the Resort World coming to?

Traipsing across the serene lawn under the giant oaks, PP shook her head as the baby deer scattered under a faraway picnic table. They’d heard the baby too and they were gonna get as far away as possible.





“WHAAAAAA!!!! WHAAAAA!!!!”

Of course, DHBF commiserated with her as soon as she started to complain about the Wee One. But only up to a point. He has kids. He raised babies. So he got it on a level that PP didn’t. What’re you gonna do with the baby when you go on vacation?

Throw it in the Pool?

Now, here’s a Modest Proposal ala Swift but modified to fit with PP’s Pool Peace Necessity.

Just toss the crying brat into the pool and watch it sink. That’s would shut it up.

But what if it didn’t sink? Those babies have lots of baby fat. Maybe it would float. And then what? Swift suggested making a meal out of the delicious little ones. Maybe PP could make some sort of floating device out of the baby?





Yeah, a Baby Pool Buoy! Once it stops wailing, it’ll float along nicely in the pool. Maybe provide a nice little fleshy dock for the wayward frogs that get caught in the pool. (DHBF rescued a frog later that day from a sure and chlorinated death with one of PP’s fins. Poor little guy. At first, DHBF had thought it was dead and so hadn’t alerted PP to her close proximity to a floating frog. But then, when he scooped it up and out of the pool and had set it gently on the cement deck, it had hopped away into the nearby shrubbery in sprightly joy.)




Yet, if there had been PP’s Baby Floating Buoy in the pool, the little froggy woulda had a place to climb up onto. Dry off. Get a tan. And then hop away once the Baby Buoy floated over to the pool’s edge.

What a perfect use for a Baby! A froggy dry dock floating in the pool!

Now we’re talking.

PP grinned as she headed down to the pool for her long awaited swim. The warm afternoon glowing in golden invitation. The pool itself shimmering in turquoise glory, just waiting for her to dive in.

But what was that she spied floating in the middle of the pool?
Could it be?



Now inside the gated enclosure, PP sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her toes in the chilly water, peering across to the pool’s big VICHY painted in big cursive letters on the bottom of the pool. Right over the top of the ‘H’, it looked like a little round white…..






Nah! PP’s just kidding.

Unlike Swift.

For as everyone knows, he dearly loved a tasty little toddler nicely salted, peppered and fried for his evening supper.

PP, on the other hand, is mostly a Vegetarian. So while she shares Swift’s taste for creative ways of managing children, she thinks she’ll stick to cookies and ice cream and spinach and bread and cheese and…..

Oh, okay. If the baby were stir fried with a little garlic and onion, some nice crisp string beans, maybe she’d partake.



Just this once. For Jonathan.

1 comment:

Ian said...

Note to all parents, and potential "breeders":

If the classic "Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift, is required reading for all who seek a solution to world poverty (or the question of rich vs poor), then PP's blog should be the contemporary classic as a solution to all pool/ swim related issues.

And they call it satire? Hey, when some old theatre artist/ actor type, Billy Shakespeare his name was, posed the penultimate question - to swim or not to swim? - little did he know that the answers would follow, right here in PP's blog.

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