When I was a kid, I would spend my summers pool-hopping with my friend Danny and my girlfriend Laura.
It wasn’t difficult. We would find a home with a pool, jump the fence, and go swimming while the homeowners were at work.
Sometimes the homeowners weren’t at work, which meant we would hop in and out of the pool rather quickly.
The ideal scenario was to find a neighborhood with several pools to hop in and out of throughout the afternoon. A neighborhood near Laura’s home was especially ripe with swimming pools. If we planned well, we could swim in half a dozen different pools over the course of an afternoon.
At one home, the homeowner left the poolhouse unlocked, and inside was a pool table. In addition to swimming, we would play pool and listen to their records, too.
It was glorious.
Pool hopping was also not as common a practice as I once thought. My friend, Dan, was also a pool hopper as a kid, but when he tells people about his adventures, they either don’t believe him or think he was the only one getting into such mischief.
Some have never even heard of pool hopping.
I was shocked. I thought everyone was pool hopping.
Why wouldn’t you?
So I did some online research on pool hopping, and it’s definitely a thing, though perhaps not as common as I once thought. It’s also often done at night, which we also did, and most often at public pools, which we did as well.
I was pool hopping at Tupperware Park one night with my friends when the police showed up, and we were forced to sneak out through a back gate to avoid being caught.
Tupperware Park did not lock its snack shack overnight, so in addition to swimming and diving off their excellent diving boards, we also enjoyed free, or if you want to be technical, stolen ice cream sandwiches and potato chips.
So… pool hopping?
Something I did often with friends, and if I’m remembering right, I may have brought my sister pool hopping once or twice, too.
And my friend Dan was doing the same.
Both in Massachusetts.
What about you?
Was pool hopping a popular and frequent way for you and your friends to spend a summer afternoon or late night?
Or are Dan’s friends correct, and it wasn’t quite as popular as we once thought?
I’m dying to know.
