The End Of The Deep End
The swimming pool as you know it is no more, and the childhood rite of passage will never be the same
by Mark Morford

So it's not exactly the end of the divine luminous world and it's not exactly as bitterly dire as BushCo smirkingly reaming this nation and gutting schools and the economy and the environment and sex and joy, all slathered with his bald-faced lies about war. No, it's not quite as bad as that.

And sure it might be only a small tragic shift, but if you're anywhere over 20 and grew up in just about any worthy suburban American town and endured anything resembling a worthy American childhood, the deep end of the swimming pool probably meant something to you, as a kid.

Something mysterious. Something scary. Something foreboding and scary and magnificent, because when you were about six years old the deep end very much represented that sudden slap of terrifying summertime anxiety -- particularly if you were new to swimming, new to the pool's otherworldly challenges, its beckoning aura of happy splish-splash impending doom.

It was powerful. It was magic and dark and transformative and the deep end was that area of the pool you ventured into extremely tentatively, excitedly, all about that rush of delicious fear and desire and quiet panic and determination. You know, just like life.
[more]