OK, I’ll be the second person to admit that I give the Pacific Northwest a hard time regarding the weather. (Any Pacific Northwesterner older than 30 will be the first.)

I like to perpetuate the myth that we get 360 days of rain per year, with two more that are overcast with no precipitation, leaving a mere three days per year (four in leap years) for the sun to try to shine.

Despite the apparent negativity of these claims, I suspect I’m actually helping tourism, because, if someone visits for a week and gets four days of sun, they’ll think “AWESOME! I got all of them! What terrific luck! I’m glad I waited ‘til leap year to come!”
The truth is that we actually get something like twelve sunny days per year. I would like to inject here that, thanks to climate change, we may be up to EIGHTEEN days of summer by the mid-21st Century.

The “Seattle-Rain” myth (originated by Emmet Watson of the Seattle Times) is a blatant attempt to prevent the further encroachment of Southern Californians who seek to spend more than a week at a time.

The downside of this weather-related boosting on my part is that now we have an influx of Scottish people looking to find a place “tha’s a wee bi’ like ‘ome!”#

So, truth be told, we do have something akin to what some might call “summer” here in the Pacific Northwest.

The weather actually gets warm periodically, plus, this is the only place in the known universe that actually benefits from “el Niño.”

As a child, on the unofficial first day of summer (July 7,) my parents would break out the wading pool. We usually wouldn’t get to use it again until the second unofficial day of summer (August 3.)

The pool was essentially a three-foot tall, nine-foot diameter soup can that had a rubber parachute draped over it.
Back in the 1970s “safety” was something that either kept your gun from misfiring, or was a position on a football team.

(Hey, this was the decade that gave us lawn darts, those springy-shoes and “pop rocks.”)

The pool had no protective covering over the ring, just raw steel. We would pull the slide from my swing set (a stand-alone safety hazard in its own right) and put the foot of it directly into the pool for a very early (and hence hazardous) water slide.

There is nothing like sliding straight into a 30-inch deep swimming pool from the dizzying height of four and a half feet. (But hey, at least the slide cleared the dangerously sharp edge of the pool.)

The pool would be in the back yard from early July (usually after the first spring thaw) and it would remain out until mid-to-late August (just prior to being covered by autumn leaves, or frozen solid.)

Algae usually took hold in late July, with mosquito larvae moving in by early August.

It was a biologist’s dream-come-true. A man-made eco-system.

Sometimes my mom or dad would add bleach to kill bacteria (thus making it safer for the mosquito larvae to thrive.)

This had the combined effect of making the thing more of a “wading pool” and less of a “cesspool,” while having the more difficult side effect of fading my swimwear. (“Hey, Creelman! Why you wearin’ pink shorts?”)

We also had a smaller, plastic wading pool for when we just wanted to get our ankles wet without filling a bathtub.

It sort of became an unspoken (by my parents) rule that the larger pool was mine while the smaller pool belonged to my sister. (Although, I must admit, I appear to be the only person who knew this rule.)

One summer, my parents broke out the “small” pool for a while, but eventually emptied it. (“Neil! There are tadpoles in Barbara’s pool!”)

My dad dumped the pool (after humanely relocating the tadpoles to the neighbors pool) and then turned it upside down.

One day I decided to hang out underneath the overturned pool. If memory serves, the word “chores” may have been an impetus to this choice of venue. (Kid logic: out of sight, out of mind.)

So, armed with a can of Coca-Cola, I camped out under the pool. (Hmmm…in retrospect, it may not have been chores, but rather one of those “if mom loves me, she’ll come look for me” mindsets.)

Either way, I abandoned my post after a short time, likely to pursue the afternoon cartoon lineup. (The inexorable call of “Marine Boy” and “Speed Racer” was overwhelming.)

A few days later, I was again either craving (or avoiding) attention, and adjourned again to my clever hiding place.

Once there, I discovered that during my previous visit, I had left behind my can of soda, half-finished.

AHA! I thought. Now I don’t have to risk (or prematurely attract) detection by going inside to get a soda.

Before I continue, allow me to clarify: I was just a kid. I had no concept of germs, mold spores or bacteria. It never occurred to me that a days-old can of soda, sitting open outside the house, might pose trouble.

I took a drink of the ugh warm-to-hot soda.

And immediately spat it out: Coke, bacteria, mold spores…and a dozen-or-so-ants… in all.

(At least there weren’t any mosquito larvae or tadpoles.)

Phoenix Flight: Rise of the Phoenix Flight: Phoenix Flight Book One

Comedy!
http://youtu.be/Y81_J6_O6Ig