We have an inground pool.
No one uses it much now that our youngest is gone, but The Man takes
good care of it--the water is always a beautiful blue. Last year I was talking to a friend from
church who happens to live in our neighborhood.
After discussing the heat and the fact that we have a pool, we made
plans for their teenage kids to come over to swim.
I was kind of excited to have them over and filled a cooler
with drinks, brought out all the fun pool gear from the shed, arranged the
chairs around the pool, and made sure the side gate was unlocked. Then I waited. And waited.
And waited some more. They never
came. Hmmm. “Could I have missed them?” I wondered. “Did they come to the front door while I was
out back? I finally wrote it off as
typical teenage fickleness. Another,
more attractive option must have presented itself!
Fast forward to a few days ago. My niece, her husband and their band, stayed
over for a couple of nights as they “toured” the northeast. They all graduated from the same Christian
college and were allowed to use two of the college’s vehicles for their
tour. Well we were all sitting around
the family room when the doorbell rang.
It was one of the teens who was supposed to have come over
swimming. (Her name is Laura.) She and an older brother (who attends another
college and was home for the summer) were rollerblading through the
neighborhood and saw the car and van with the college’s logo sitting in our
driveway. Laura plans on attending that
very same college in the fall, so she was all excited and came to our door to
ask why the vehicles were at our house.
I invited them in, rollerblades and all, to talk to the band. We were all glad they stopped by because
Laura told us about an “open mike” opportunity at a local coffee shop that
night. The band hustled and got
themselves together, gulped down some
dinner, and left.
Now Laura sings too.
Actually her whole family sings and plays instruments. (Her parents are the music directors at our
church.) So Laura and some of her
brothers were also planning on playing/singing at the coffee shop’s open mike
night. The Man and I went over to watch
the band play and while there, I ran into Kim, Laura’s mother. She said, “Boy do I have a funny story to
tell you!”
It turns out that after Laura and her brother got home from
their impromptu visit that afternoon, she told her mom she had been mistaken
about where we lived. She thought we
lived in another house her mom had
once pointed out (where another acquaintance lived). That’s the house she and her brother had visited to go swimming last summer. So while I was scurrying around preparing our
pool for them, they were happily letting themselves in someone else’s gate where
they proceeded to swim for about two hours.
Laura even went in the back door and used their “facilities”! (Apparently the homeowners : 1. weren’t home, or 2. were cowering in their
closet wondering if the uninvited kids in their pool were crazy and possibly
dangerous.)
Anyway—it was evident
that no other “more attractive option” had presented itself on that fateful day
last summer—it was just a case of
mistaken house identity! Mystery solved.
