• When I lived in Healdsburg California, my best friends were the Auguanos. Anna, Jackie, Fabian, Marcos, Jose and the youngest was Chewy. My sister, Katrina, the Auguanos and I treasured going to the pool but we all loathed paying for it. None of us had an allowance and none of our mothers would pay for all of us to go to the pool. We were as poor as rats.
    But there was a solution to the problem. The woman’s locker room had a fire exit door with a deactivated alarm. So what solution did we come up with? We would send the youngest girl in to pay for it, and walk into the woman’s locker room to open the door for all the others on the outside. We could get sixteen girls and four boys in for the price of a ten year old's admission, five dollars, and no one ever noticed. To hell with the expensive rat called Chuckie Cheese...
    We had done this for years and years yet we were never caught.
    We would go into the medium pool and try to make a whirlpool by running along the walls in a circle in one direction. In the large pool we would go diving for pennies or try to brave the high jump. Often we lounged on the sweet green grass with a giant blanket, eating otter pops. Or we'd take towels and cover the drain in the showers of the woman’s locker room, and soak our feet in hot water. It was the days of childhood where anything was possible.
    I miss going to the swimming pool with them and the fun we had. They were my best friends and it wasn’t the pool that is fun that made it fun. It was the secrecy and the mischief that we were sneaking in, that we were cheating the system. We slunk in quietly, whispering and giggling nervously with adrenaline. We were lovers of the water and sneaky ones at that; being the youngest, I was given the job to open the door and sneak them in.

    I was the one who snuck in the water rats...