Mike Pound: Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

There I was floating on a raft, riding a small ocean wave, while a gentle Caribbean breeze blew over me and slowly rocked me to a peaceful afternoon nap.

Then something happened to wake me from my snooze. A noise, followed by an unexpected splash of water.

“A dolphin perhaps?” I thought to myself.

Or maybe a blue marlin bursting to the surface.

Then the noise came into focus. It was a voice that was strangely familiar.

“Go Emma, go Emma, go Emma,” the voice said.

Suddenly the Caribbean breeze was replaced by hot, humid Southwest Missouri air. The “raft” I was on turned into a mesh float thingy with a rip in it and the ocean became our small, 24-hour-retail-store-bought above-ground pool.

And the noise? Our 11-year-old daughter, Emma.

Welcome to vacation, Pound style.

The idea was for me to take a view days off at home before heading off for my manly macho float trip with my manly, macho uncle, brother, brother-in-law and nephew. What I planned to do was spend a few days at home unwinding. A few days to get away from the daily grind of writing inane attempts at humor. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not but since George Bush and Dick Cheney left office, things haven’t been quite as funny. In the past few months, the making-fun-of-things business has been sort of a tough gig. So I decided I needed to take a break. I needed to relax a bit. Spend a couple afternoons floating in our backyard pool. Enjoying the peace and quiet. The solitude. But when making my plans I made one small error.

I forgot I had an 11-year-old daughter.

OK, I didn’t actually forget that I had an 11-year-old daughter. That would be sort of silly. What I forgot was that sometimes an 11-year-old daughter needs to be entertained. And by entertained I mean listened to while she entertains herself.

That’s the thing about 11-year-old kids: They can entertain themselves, but they feel a need to include you in the entertainment.

For example, Monday while I tried to let the pressure of making fun of things ease out of my body, Emma thought it would be fun to swim laps in our pool. I don’t know if you’ve seen the kind of 24-hour-retail-store pool that we have in our back yard, but if you haven’t, let me just say that they don’t lend themselves to swimming laps. Some people have lap-swimable pools but some people don’t work at a newspaper. The people who work at a newspaper have non-lap-swimable pools in their back yard.

What our pool is good for is for a middle-aged guy to relax on a 3-year-old float thingy and try to nap, which is what I was trying to do when Emma decided to do her best Michael Phelps impression — only without the bong.

“Emma, do you have to do that?” is what I asked after receiving a face full of water via her kick on her Australian crawl. By the way, what to you think they call the Australian crawl in Australia? I’m thinking they just call it the “crawl.”

When I asked Emma if she had to kick water in my face she looked at me and said, “Yes.”

Ask a silly question.

Actually, I think Emma said yes but I really couldn’t tell. That’s because she was wearing a snorkel mask and had a snorkel in her mouth when she answered my question. I’m not sure why she was wearing a snorkel mask and snorkel in our four-foot pool but she was.

I told Emma I really didn’t want to get wet and then pushed my float thingy to the other side of our pool.

“If you don’t want to get wet, what are you doing in the pool?” Emma asked me.

I ignored her.

After a few minutes, she decided she didn’t want to wear the mask and snorkel anymore and tossed them out of the pool. Instead, Emma decided she wanted to show me a few of her gymnastic routines in the water.

“This is a handstand,” Emma said.

“Wow,” I said.

“This is a cartwheel,” Emma said.

“Amazing,” I said.

“This is a round off,” Emma said.

“I’m stunned,” I said.

“And this is a back handspring,” Emma said.

“Pack my clothes and send them to heaven. Now I’ve seen everything,” I said.

“You’re not paying attention, are you?” Emma said.

“No,” I said.

The thing is, Emma seemed OK with the fact that I wasn’t paying attention to her. I think the only thing that mattered to her was that she was annoying me. That’s another thing about 11-year-old kids: They like to annoy their parents. And really, I’m OK with that. I mean, I spend most of my days now trying to figure out ways to annoy Emma; the least I can do is allow her a few minutes to annoy me.

What goes around comes around, I always say. Well, I don’t always say that. In fact I don’t think I ever say that. But I think it sometimes.

Later, Emma decided to bless me with the recitation of some sort of nonsensical rhyme/rap/cheer thing that 11-year-old girls are fond of reciting. I didn’t really catch all of what she was saying, mainly because I wasn’t paying attention. I just know that it was long and there were no PG-13 parts to the rap.

I was relieved.

While Emma talked I sort of nodded off again. And then I heard another loud splash, only this time I didn’t get upset.

“Probably another dolphin,” I said to myself and continued riding the cool Caribbean waves.

A guy can dream can’t he?

Address correspondence to Mike Pound, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802, or via e-mail at mpound@joplinglobe.com.

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