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"Nice can opener, mister!" said the small boy in front of me as I joined the line at the diving board.
The compliment went straight to my heart. It was so pleasing and unexpected I probably blushed.
"Thanks, kid," is what I probably should have replied, but instead I stuttered, "The, the, the trick is to lean back," thinking in my confusion that sharing what I considered the secret to my technique for making a big splash was somehow the most appropriate response. I immediately regretted my words because they obviously (but thankfully) did not register with anyone in the small queue of swim-suited boys and girls, none of whose wet little heads reached the level of my belly button.
What did I expect? That one of them would follow up with a question such as, "Is that why at the apex of your jump you wave your arms in backwards circles, to get the right angle of entry?" To which I would have replied, "Why, yes, young man (or lady). A vertical entry gets very little splash, and too much lean and your back will be badly stung."
In grateful silence now I waited patiently for my turn on the diving board to perform, yes, another can opener. I had previously only done a couple, along with a watermelon to show I am not a one-trick pony, though in essence I am a one-trick pony. (In a can opener you enter the water feet first, leaning back, one leg straight and one tucked at the last second. A watermelon is a dive converted to a double-tuck headfirst cannonball. A seater is just what it sounds like.)
On my previous trip to the board I was surprised to hear a young voice, coming from the vicinity of the lifeguard's chair on the far right, yelling clearly, "Do a can opener!"
Had the speaker been the same boy who now offered the compliment? Or perchance had my performance been noticed by others?
My next can opener was good, though not spectacular, with a satisfying thump as the water above my head violently closed the hole I had made in it. Those who perform splash-inducing dives such as cannonballs, seaters and watermelons can tell how good they are by the thump.
I swam over to the ladder nearest to where my wife Honey, daughter Shark and sister Col. Peggy were sitting with at pool's edge, their legs dangling in the water.
"A boy complimented me on my can opener!" I announced. "He made my day!"
They smiled indulgently. These three women know me.
I spent much of my boyhood summers at the Tomlinson Run State Park swimming pool, but it had been many years since I had been back. That thought struck me recently as I was sweating through another hot, humid summer day of working in my garden.
Shark has a family pass and frequently takes her boys Lamppost Head and The 747 to the pool. I told her, "The next time you go swimming, ask me to go with you," and she did.
When I told my wife and sister I was going to the pool, they said they'd like to go, too. So did The Favorite, our other young grandson. It became an extended family outing.
Our parents worked the gate and concession at the pool in the late '50s, and Col. Peggy was a teenage lifeguard there. It was there I first laid hands on my future wife, during 4-H camp in 1967. I liked redheads and there were two redheads on a blanket in the grass. I picked one, and Johnny Mayhew helped me throw her into the pool. She was 14, I was 17. That night I kissed her behind her cabin.
But enough ancient history.
What's important about this story is that I made quite a splash (ha-ha) with my can opener at the pool where I had perfected it more than half a century ago. The splash is probably even bigger, considering that I, ahem, displace more water than I did then.
But seriously, take a moment to give a sincere compliment to someone, including strangers, when you see something worthy of one, however small. It will lift their spirits and encourage them to do the same for others. Herewith endeth the lesson.
(Fred Miller's books of stories are $10, available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies, and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)