May 24, 2013 3 min read

This is Mike Buzzelli reporting live (sort of) from Virginia Beach. I hear the weather is better back in Southwestern Pennsylvania, but I am still glad to be on vacation.

I made a last-minute decision to go to the beach for the Memorial Day weekend. Actually, I don’t know if I can call it a last-minute decision because I decided Monday to drive down here Friday. There’s a lot of minutes between Monday and Friday, especially the ones between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The waves have been pretty choppy and I decided to go back to the pool. Here’s the thing … every time I go to a pool, wherever I am, some kid who must not get enough attention from his parents finds me and starts with the “Look at me! Watch me do this!”

I dutifully watch some stranger’s kid flop around in the water, or jump off the dive, etc. I want to say to the parent or guardian, “I didn’t come to the pool to babysit your kid,” but I am too nice. I always try to devote as much time as I can to kids, especially ones who aren’t getting attention elsewhere, but I also kind of want to be left alone and flop around in the water or go off the diving board myself. It’s a summer conundrum.

In Seville, Spain, some random boy came up to me and did the same thing. I suspect he was saying, “Look at me. Watch this!” but, since I don’t speak any Spanish, I am not entirely sure. I hope he wasn’t saying, “I just peed in the pool.” Let’s blame this one on the Rosetta Stone DVDs. If those Spanish lessons were cheaper, I probably would have understood this kid.

This one time in Vegas, a brother and sister were splashing each other in the casino pool. I swam to different spots in the pool to avoid them, but those two kids would sidle up nearby and start pushing waves of water at one another. After I got splashed several times, I told them to knock it off. Their mother came at me with, “If you don’t want to get wet maybe you shouldn’t stand in the pool!” I didn’t want to have to explain to her that going underwater on my own was a lot different than taking a direct hit in the eyeball. Instead, I said, “Hey kids! You should splash your mom!” That didn’t go over very well. Actually, the kids thought it was hilarious. Their irate mother thought I was the world’s biggest (fill in with the curse word of your choice). I’m just saying if you have two small children, maybe you ought to bob up from that People magazine every now and again and see what they’re doing.

I hope you all have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend and remember … whenever you hear a big splash just turn and say, “That was nice!” Most of the time, you don’t even have to be paying attention.