The Scorpion In The Pool

A windy day, mid-March on the outskirts of Phoenix, the weather finally turning hotter, so time to clean the pool and get the yard ready for guests. 

It’s a decent sized pool, thirty feet long by twelve wide with the usual slope from around three feet to eight feet deep.

You grab the long handled net and prepare to fish out a few leaves, a fragment of palm bark and what looks like a kid’s rubber toy in the depths of the far end of the pool.

The leaves and palm debris are easy enough, but the kid’s toy – a brown-black scorpion -- scoots away each time you approach it with the net until you decide you’ll have to go in for it yourself – no big deal, it’ll feel good to cool off a bit after even just a few minutes work out in the mid-morning sun, so you take off your shoes and wade into the shallow end of the pool, donning a pair of goggles so you’ll be able to see clearly as you go to fish out your prey.

The cool water and the smell of chlorine surround you as you plunge your head below the surface and begin the swim down, a combination that since childhood has always meant the coming of springtime weather and lazy hours exploring the aquamarine depths of one pool or another.

You set your sights on the toy and glide down toward it, only to realize when your hand is no more than an inch or two away that it’s not a toy at all but an actual drowned scorpion – you instinctively pull back from it and kick back toward the surface, backing away from the scorpion even though logic tells you it’s dead – there’s something about it though, something instantly primal that spooks you to get away from it.

You’re back in the shallow end of the pool before you even really think about it but now the whole thing feels unsafe, invaded, the carefree anticipation now darkened; a brief cloud passes over the sun and you feel the temperature drop a few degrees, the wind now picking up a bit. You’re 55 years old, standing in water up to your waist, the small, unexpected death of your feeling of safety suddenly spiraling throughout your unwelcome, mortal awareness.