I can’t remember where we were or what hotel we were staying at but that might be the perfect background to this experience.
My husband travels a good bit for business and accumulates hotel points we use for family trips. We’ve had some interesting experiences but one in particular came to mind today.
My younger daughter always asked to be taken to the hotel pool so we’d try to fit it in which usually meant we ended up at the pool at odd hours. The pools are always down the hall, around the corner, past the vending machines and into nowhere land…and you never knew if you should bring towels but it was a minor adventure so off, we went. My husband, as a farm kid, rarely, came along, he’s never really liked pools so it was my daughter who was probably 6 or 7 at the time and me.
I remember this pool was quite nice, a step up from most hotel pools, larger, sunlit and no discernible musty pool funk smell. We were the only ones there which was also a common experience and one of the things I liked most about hotel pools. We floated and paddled around and played together for some time when the door opened and a tall, casual but very well-dressed woman came in with two of the most perfect looking child specimens I have ever seen, then or now. They were stunning to look at, perfect, tall, lean, and proportional, beautiful skin, lovely if not particularly memorable faces. The Teutonic gods couldn’t have designed better. They might have been twins, maybe 12 or so years old.
They moved with grace, no excessive use of energy, fluid, at easy in their bodies at what is an awkward age for their peers. Try not to stare at that, I dare you.
The woman directed them to the diving board and they each in turn performed near perfect –I just can’t bring myself to commit to that much perfection—dives, well coached, clean, never a toe out of place.
They did these beautiful, clean dives several times each, the woman handed them their towels, they put on covers and glided out. The perfection was blinding, disturbing, memorable.
I’ve never known what to make of it and it’s a memory that sits in the back of my head twenty years later…
Khatzkel Did It 