The end of the deep end? POOF!

============= SF GATE MORNING FIX =============
July 9, 2003 -- Courtney Love turns 39 today
By Mark Morford: [email protected]
http://sfgate.com/columnists/morford/a/
"Lube up, lean into the fire, and laugh"
~~ nil desperandum ~~

== MARK'S NOTES & ERRATA ==
Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse

== 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)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/07/09/notes070903.DTL&nl=fix

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.

It meant something mysterious. Something scary. Something foreboding
and magnificent, because when you were about six years old the deep end
very much represented that sudden dose of calmly 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
internal panic and determination. You know, just like life.

The deep end was, of course, the place to face your demons. To test your mettle, your fortitude, your burgeoning superhero powers, to see if you could dog-paddle sufficiently frantically all the way to the opposite edge without drowning and when you made it you felt this crazy rush of pride and love and power, your little heart beating like a crazy techno remix because you were now strong. You were godlike. You were the water-bound Thwarter of Death. You were six years old.

Here's why you should care: The deep end is vanishing. Maybe you didn't
know. Cities are filling them in, hotels are redesigning their outdoor
amenities, backyard-pool manufacturers are no longer building pools with areas deeper than five feet. Too much danger, they say. Too many broken necks and screaming kids and drowned people and lawsuits, they
say. Aquatics tastes have changed, they say.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/07/01/national1354EDT0617.DTL&nl=fix

Bah, we say. This is a significant tragedy. This is yet another shift in our increasingly panicky and trepidatious culture toward further sanitizing the world, stripping it of all edge and menace and wonder and vital rites of passage and what's next, the end of lawn darts? The demise of the wicked-cool playground, full of looming monkey bars and dramatic swing sets and huge metal slides? The end of the manual-clutch transmission, fer chrissakes? Whoops, too late.

The deep end is, of course, the metaphor to end all metaphors. There is
quite possibly no more perfectly apt allegory for life and experience and growing up, and we are blindly wiping it out because we are increasingly terrified of anything we can't completely control and sanitize and buffer for easier swallowing. Hey, just like BushCo!

There will be no more diving. There will be no more diving boards. There will be no more tossing the quarter over your shoulder into the silent toxically chlorinated depths and then excitedly diving down down down into the void and grabbing that shiny prize and emerging from the water like Jacques Cousteau with evidence of the lost riches of Atlantis. All day long, over and over and over. But no more.

There will be no more comments like, "Man is he ever off the deep end" or "The deep end is only for big kids, honey" or "That's not a deep end -- that's my sister." You get the idea.

It is a vital rite of passage. It is glorious accomplishment, from terrified tyke sporting wimpy inflatable arm-floaty things to fearless Olympic freestyler, gliding effortlessly through the shimmering backyard vastness, luxuriating in how you can finally traverse the deep end confidently, effortlessly, at will, you in complete control of your body and your world and your liquid universe, the pool now a welcoming watery playground rather than a fathomless abyss. Screw the damn floaties. You are in the deep end. You have arrived.

The next generation will not know the backyard cannonball dive. They will not know the desperation of hiding down in the deep end during nervous first-time teenage skinny-dipping. They will not know the belly flop or the swan dive or the pike or the spike or the dude-I-am-so-wasted-I-think-I'll-leap-off-your-roof-into-the-pool. Damn tragic, is what it is.

In fact, unless they have access to a lake or ocean -- which, of course, the vast majority don't -- they will not know any diving at all, really, maybe a couple lame splashes here and there but no real vertical thrill, no overcoming that fear of leaping into the void, of momentary flight, splashdown, rush rush gargle splash zoom wow hey mom watchthiswatchthiswatchthis.

And they will not know that gasping, oh-my-freaking-God-I-almost-didn't-make-it-to-the-other-side feeling you get when you struggle and gasp and wheeze and just know, deep in your innocent 6-year-old soul, that you just brushed flippers with the Scythed, Black-Robed One.

This is vital. This is key. Because the end of the deep end means maybe, just maybe, we aren't allowing ourselves, our kids, those more vital, deeper explorations. That we are increasingly preventing them -- and ourselves -- from experiencing, on their own terms, those more profound risks and mistakes and gasping epiphanies.

Sure sure, removing the deep end makes some sort of whiny politically
correct sense and prevents accidents and protects kids a little more, averts lawsuits and blah blah blah, but hell if we really want to protect kids we'd lock them in a small padded room and give them nothing but a large stuffed penguin and a simpleminded ideology to play with for about 18 years before partially lobotomizing them and making them into born-again Republicans. I mean, please.

What is left, really, to teach us of the wonders and perils of solo survivalism and accomplishment and desperate breaststroke struggle?
What is left to impart hints of terror and bliss and little exhilarating winks of potential death? What, in short, will supplant the deep end? The media? "Survivor?" War? The NRA? Dick Cheney's pallid hateful sneer? Not quite.

No, the demise of the deep end may not be the end of the world as you
know it. But it's sure as hell the end of one of our more fascinating, and vital, deeper perspectives.