Having spent some time vacationing, I can assure you that there are 5 people who you will meet at any resort swimming pool. Not only do you recognize these 5 people immediately, but…

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Guest Blogger: Jon Furman – Furmanifesto – www.furmanifesto.com

Have you ever walked around a theme park and recognized somebody from earlier in the day?  Like maybe you were headed to dinner on an old-tyme steamboat and accidentally locked eyes with a person that had been 27 people ahead of you in line for a rocket-ship, before lunch?

Isn’t it a strange feeling to recognize and find familiarity with someone you don’t really know?  Recently I came to understand this feeling in a unique and interesting, if not completely insignificant, way.

Having spent some time vacationing, I can assure you that there are 5 people who you will meet at any resort swimming pool.  Not only do you recognize these 5 people immediately, but you can probably guess what they’re up to without even speaking to them.

 ”The Foreign Speedo” 
Probably the silliest thing you could do at a resort pool (besides thinking you’ve used enough sunscreen) is walk up to a man wearing a Speedo and begin speaking to him in English.

While there’s an outside chance that you are actually walking up to an aging Mark Spitz, the odds are more in favor of you encountering an Archduke of Inner-Swabia or an ex-member of ABBA.  Either way, he’ll never get in the pool; nope he’s gonna stand there sipping his drink the whole time…  lettin’ everybody get a look-see.

“The Unsupervised Cannonballer”
Somewhere, about 10 floors up,  a man and woman have dead-bolted a hotel room door, turning a hyperactive 9 year-old boy loose on an entire resort community.  While Mom and Dad are taking a break from monitoring little Jackson Breckenridge, this kid is having the time of his life ruining the vacation of every middle-aged man and recently wedded woman.

When he’s not having another Mtn. Dew, or telling everybody to watch him try a backflip, he’s breaking numbers 3 (running), 4 (shouting), and 7 (Putting a P in their “ool”) of the posted pool rules.

“The Couple”  
These two people can come in many forms, but what they all have in common is the ability to clear out a pool or hot tub in just a matter of seconds:

There’s the “Blue Lagooners” who always start out in the quasi-awkward “floating spider” embrace and end up playing tonsil- hockey under the vanity water fall feature.

“The Clooney’s” at first appear to be a father and his young-adult daughter sharing one last “daddy date” before the destination wedding, only to destroy that safety-illusion by sharing the same Mai Tai straw.

And who could forget, “The Argue-mooners” who believed that the stress and family pressure of the wedding would just melt away once they spent 10 hours travelling across 5 time-zones and entered a country where nobody else speaks English.

Sunglasses and Red Wine Goblet
S&RWG is setting new standards in sunny vacationing.  Not only did she do her hair and makeup before coming down to the pool, she has also perfected the ability to travel all the way around its inner-rim of it without spilling her drink, losing her giant sunglasses, or getting wet above the waist… and yes she didn’t skip the deep end.  S&RWG’s demeanor exudes a rare blend of vacationing confidence and competence; take notes amateurs, you are watching 30 years of timeshare ownership in action.

Honorable mentions go to “Poolside High-Heels” for classing up the joint, and “Straw Hat and Long-sleeve Swimshirt guy” who is the functional equivalent of a swimming pool scarecrow.

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Did I miss anybody?  My list is not at all exhaustive, feel free to join the conversation by letting me know about the people populating your poolsides.

Okay, I can’t resist… lastly, there is the “legend” – the stories travel from person to person about this allusive fellow until someone finally gets him on video putting all the scepticism to rest knowing that the legend truly does exist. Enjoy!