Hey. I know this number probably doesn't work anymore. But I'm sitting at the shallow end of the old public pool, and I had to say something.
Remember that summer we worked here as lifeguards? You showed up with a paper crown from the Taco Bell drive-thru. It was tax season, you said, and you needed something to make you feel like royalty.
You put it on my head. 'Now you're king of the shallow end,' you said. I wore it all shift.
I found it in a box last week. Still folded, just like you handed it to me.
You left for the city that fall. I stayed. Took up landscaping, married a local girl, have two kids who now swim in this same shallow end.
I always thought I'd go too. But the crown kept me. Or maybe it was the way you said 'king of the shallow end' and I believed it.
Anyway. I kept your paper crown. Still can't throw it away. I think you should know that.