Heading to the pool is a great summertime activity, but it can also lend itself to some super embarrassing and funny experiences. After all, you've got water, swimsuits, and sometimes even waterslides (not to mention the sun beating down). We're still laughing (and maybe cringing a little bit) about these pool stories.
Speed Demon Dad on the Water Slide
Our content director, Karen, shared a pool story about her dad that's equal parts horrifying and funny (now):
I worked at a waterslide park in college as my summer job every year. My whole family got together one weekend that I was off and decided to go to the waterslides together (employee discount, baby!). We were there for about five minutes when my dad (it was always my dad) decided he wanted to try to go faster down a slide by lying on his back and sliding on his shoulder blades and his heels. My dad was big — 6'5", and he had an autoimmune condition called ankylosing spondylitis, which essentially meant his spinal vertebrae were fusing together, so he didn't have a ton of mobility.
So down my dad went, and I went a safe distance after him. When I got to the bottom of the slide, my dad was on the side of the pool with his hands over his eye, and my sister (who is an RN) was hanging on his back, arguing with the EMT over who was the best person to treat him. He actually did achieve very fast speeds and whapped his head on the slide coming down, and he'd split his eyebrow open. So we all had to leave the park after 5 minutes there, and my boyfriend and I drove him to the ER. The next year, they started requiring inner tubes for everyone going down the slides.
Related: 17 Surprising Things We Did as Kids That Should Have Come With Warnings
Daredevil at Dollywood
Megan, our content and marketing specialist, also had a great water slide story:
My family went to Dollywood every year for vacation as a kid, and one of the big water rides was a huge seated raft innertube thing, right? So, a big problem for me was my hubris (unsurprising), and the fact that I grew really tall very early, but weighed practically nothing. So, I always hit height requirements (even though I shouldn't have). Anyways, the whole family gets into this big raft thing that races down a huge slide, noting that the operator told us where to sit based on height.
The raft comes off a curve and bounces into the other side of the slide, tossing me straight into the air with it. The raft comes back down, and I'm still floating. My dad grabs me out of the air by the back of my shirt and tries to hold me down for the rest of the ride.
Related: 15 Epic Pool Party Games for Teens
Why You Should Never Buy a White Swimsuit
My own most embarrassing pool story was definitely not funny at the time, but it gets laughs of sympathy when I tell it now. It's my own real-life version of that dream where you're in class without any clothes.
I was in 7th grade, and my whole class had to do these swimming lessons in a public pool. It was already a nightmare with locker room changing and everything, but it definitely got worse. I had just moved to the school, and my mom bought me this black and white bathing suit at Kmart (the other girls later told me that it was not the coolest place to buy anything).
Turned out that when the white part of the suit got wet, it was totally see-through. Another girl took me aside and told me that I was basically naked in front of the entire class.
The great thing about a really, really embarrassing story is that you can always horrify and amuse people with it later! I try to keep this in mind when anything super humiliating happens to me.
Worst Poolside Sunburn Ever
Megan shared another great story from her own time in middle school:
One of my funniest pool stories is from 7th/8th grade (can't quite remember). Important context: Twice a day, every day during my summer vacation in all of elementary school, my family would go to the neighborhood pool, so I was wickedly tan. Cut to 7th or 8th grade, having moved (this neighborhood didn't have a pool at the time, so I hadn't really been in the sun like that in at least a year), and I went to my friends' house for a big pool party. I deliberately only put on spray sunscreen when I first got there and never reapplied because in my teen mind, my skin could handle the sun like a champ.
That night we went to the movies, and all I can remember is spending the entire time thinking about the throbbing, pulsating heat from my blistered shoulders that took WEEKS to heal.
Memorably Fun Pool Moments
Hanging at the pool is awesome in its own right, but you're also building memories. Whether you're there every single day of summer vacation or just visiting on a family trip, we hope your moments are memorably fun.
