Water Babies

“Howard, look!” I exclaimed to my husband at the pool this morning. What looked like folded money was drifting in the water. He grabbed it, and I noticed the pocket to his swimsuit was inside out. “I thought you left that in your wallet that we locked in my purse in the car!” I said unbelievingly. Apparently he hadn’t, not keeping out just a couple of dollars as I had thought.

Thank God we had seen it! When we got back to the other side of the pool, though, there was a $20 bill floating around! I promptly took the money and put it away for safekeeping. On the way home, we stopped at the bank to make a deposit. “They won’t take wet money!” I speculated. But they did. It was only slightly damp by then, like my eyes from laughing at my unpredictable husband.

I didn’t want to stay in the water too long today, because I usually feel very fatigued if we stay too long. I had told my husband that it even made me a little queasy. Today he said his stomach wasn’t feeling well, and decided it was because we had eaten not long before. This led to a discussion of the merits of not eating before going swimming.

“My mother always drilled it into us to not go swimming after we had just eaten,” Howard said. “She wouldn’t even let us take a bath after eating!” he went on. Now I was laughing again. “No, really, it made my brother sick once when he did that,” my husband said seriously. Maybe he had eaten too much and had a very full bathtub, I thought.

Supposedly the danger of eating before swimming was that it would cause stomach cramps and could possibly cause drowning. Now that has been mostly dismissed as old wives tales, although it is best to wait an hour before going swimming because the blood and oxygen needed for strength in swimming is being utilized by the digestive process.

Anyway, I will not eat before we go to the pool next time. Throwing up would be disastrous. Nor will Howard carry money in his swimsuit. This is not what the Bible means when it says to cast your bread upon the waters!