EDMONTON - Oscar had been blowing bubbles in the teach pool. I'll let you guess which end the bubbles were coming from.

Intermittently, innocently, they rose in clusters to the water's surface then vanished without odour into the damp, faintly bleachy pool air. Oscar took no notice of his baby farts, shoving an unidentifiable, vibrantly coloured hunk of plastic into his mouth.

Were this a movie, and were I a film studies student watching this scene, I would have made a note to myself to explore the significance of those bubbles. What was the director trying to say with his close-up on those bubbles? A touch of foreshadowing, perhaps? Some sort of omen?

But this was not a movie. And I was not a film studies student. I was a mother, a foolish mother given false comfort by her son's leak-proof swimsuit.

"What should you put inside the Swimmi?" its package inquired, then answered itself. "Absolutely nothing!" Bring it on, I thought. Bring. It. On.

Now, before I proceed with this tale of ignominy and stink, I'd like you to know that Oscar is quite a long baby, following in the footsteps of his lanky parents. For this very reason I decided (erroneously, as you can probably already imagine) that it would pose little risk for him to wear the large swimsuit -the one for babies 22-30 pounds -instead of the medium swimsuit, for babies 15-22 pounds, which was, according to his weight of 16 pounds, the correct size. Alas, the store didn't have any of that size left. And what's a pound here or there when the baby is long?

Oscar and I had been swimming together for weeks with nary a snag. His swimsuit, blue with orange and white fish, had yet to be tested, but not once did I worry. Leak-proof. Besides, don't babies hold their poos when you submerge them? Or, hang on, is that their breath? Hmm.

The teach pool was packed. A mother floated by on a pink noodle while her daughter stood at the edge, hitching up the bottom half of her striped pink bikini, waiting for someone to catch her as she jumped in. A skinny boy showered his friend with a lime-green watering can. An enthusiastic dad, decked out in snorkelling gear, chased his two girls the length of the pool. Along the edge, several male lane swimmers, rendered raccoons by the goggle marks around their eye sockets, sat silent, mollified by the warm water's jets. Their introspective gazes suggested a pleasantly fatigued sort of reflection, as though they were going over the intricacies of their backstroke, or perhaps reliving the sly, sacred glimpse of an oncoming cleavage, repeated for 40 laps.

All of a sudden, less than 10 minutes after our arrival, there came a small subaqueous explosion. Like a puffer fish, Oscar's trunks inflated. I looked down to see mustard-coloured particles dispersing through the turquoise waters, as though a wind had picked up and stripped a dandelion of its clock. Wind picking up, indeed.

Mortified, I hailed the lifeguard, a young fellow armed with a flutter board who only moments before was rebuking boisterous barefoot boys scampering across the pool deck. ("Waaalk!" Smirk.) His brows lifted quizzically as he approached. In a low voice, I explained.

"My son just, um, pooped in the pool." Then quickly, though it was not an afterthought, "I'm sorry."

"Oh." His eyes scanned the chlorinated waters for evidence. Quickly, calmly, and, bless him, without explanation or finger-pointing, he began asking people to evacuate the water. My ears burned with embarrassment. The party had been spoiled, and it was my doing.

Confused murmurs and grumbles filled the air. Soon, the teach pool was as empty as my son's bowels. In the shallow end of the 25-metre pool next door, a trio of little girls speculated.

"Why can't we go in that pool?" one of them asked the lifeguard.

"There's a shark in there." He turned to me and grinned. "I'm sorry," I repeated. "It's OK," he said. "Poop hapens."

Fecal incidents happen weekly in the teach pool, he told me. Hence higher chlorine levels. He thanked me for telling him. Often, he confided, staff just see a little brown nugget floating around with no one paying it any mind. Worse, he said, is when someone's muffin sinks to the bottom of the diving tank, requiring a diver to go down and fetch it by hand.

"We don't have a net long enough."

I'd planned to meet up with a friend and her son that night. Hanging out on deck, watching them swim in the larger pool, I soaked in all the rules that swimmers must abide by. NO DIVING, one sign said. NO SPITTING, said another. And I was reminded of a 24-hour bus trip my husband and I took in Argentina four years ago. On the bus's bathroom door, a crude handwritten notice had been posted.

"Solo liquido," it read in Spanish. "No hacer caca."

Yes, perhaps the pool could do with a NO HACER CACA sign, too. For those old enough to read. And, for parents, a subclause about purchasing leak-proof swimsuits that fit.

ewithey@edmontonjournal.com

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