Watch Me!

This first appeared here. And lately it's been over here, thanks to the lovely Heather of the Everyday Ordinary and my girl, Whiskey in her Sippy Cup, and all the other amazing people at Story Bleed Magazine.

Tomorrow, I'll be drinking sitting down with Kathie Lee and Hoda to talk about my silly life with kids and also the book, Torn. Pretty crazy and also cool.

Anyhoo, this post seemed amazingly apropos:

Kids at a pool: it's the epitome of fantastic wretchedness.

They swim and dunk and dive and flop unattended and fully entertained and working up to an excellent exhaustion. The sunscreen melts off the minute it's applied, but their bodies are submerged, so: only shoulders get burnt, maybe noses. They paddle and flop and hunt quarters at depths taller than they are. They coordinate games named "Baby Dolphins." They get drenched and pickled and giddy all at once.

But the goggles are too tight or too loose or worse than her brother's. The towel is too soggy but worthy of a battle, a whippingatyou, smackingatyou battle. The sister's belly flop is half-assed and "mine will be better and hurt more than hers" and WATCH ME WATCH ME WATCH ME will echo across the chlorine, over the deck chairs, past my magazine, and straight into my face. Straight into my face over and over and over: WATCH MEEEEEEE!

I explain that I have but two eyes and even if one goes one way and the other another, I still cannot see Three Short Drunk People do Amazing Short Drunk People Tricks in the pool. So I say -- "you first" and "your turn now" and "hold on! hold up! do it again: I am watching."

Watching what? Nothing really. A kid holding her breath for as long as little lungs can, a wobbly hand-stand where points are counted for pointed toes, a boy and his butt-crack attempting a cannon ball. Watch me! they shout.

What they mean to say is: See me! SEE. ME.

I struggle to get through a page of the New York Post, which is pathetically impossible. I am commanded to WATCH ME every four to seven seconds but I realize something as I do as told, as I bear witness to nothing and everything: little changes with age. That impulse to be seen? It clings to the body like salt water or chemicals. It holds on past childhood.

New jeans, fresh paint, shiny car, a sleek tattoo: we dive in, we jack-knife, we swim the fastest, we make waves, we sink to the bottom, we do a dead mans float, we make up games and break the rules, we hunt for money at some depth deeper than we should, we float and drift to the stairs.

See Me! we say. We say it sometimes without speaking. We say it to people we love and to strangers and to passers-by. We are all sometimes just kids at a pool, fantastically wretched and soaked and half-naked.

Watch me.