Personal Essays

hippo pool toy



Inflatable pool toys are not about swimming.

The come with warning labels that tell you that, at least they do now. When I was a kid, they always seemed to come with razor-sharp hard plastic edges on the seams. They took forever to blow up.

Mostly they floated around the pool on their own. If you were hot, you didn't want to be on a float but in the water. If you were cold, they couldn't keep you dry enough. I like to watch them circulate around an empty pool, pushed by the wind, or lazily drifting around revealing the otherwise hidden currents.


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