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The sprinkler was out this evening as we tried to rescue our new lawn (half of it is thriving, but half of it is going brown). My daughter wanted to play in this improvised fountain. She ran around it, partly trying to avoid the water, but squealing with delight when it hit her. She wanted to put on her swimming costume, but that was too much of a faff, so then she asked if she could just take her clothes off. And of course, she could. She’s three. We were in the back garden. If you can’t run naked through a sprinkler at 3 years old then ISIS has won.
In Devon, in the hotel swimming pool, there had been a mini-waterfall at the deep end, which I had kept “accidentally” backing into and then pretended to be cross that Phoebe hadn’t warned me. She had found this (correctly) hilarious and it had stuck in her mind as she was now doing the same gag back to me as she walked through the middle of the sprinkler. “Why didn’t you tell me?” The pupil has become the master.
She was having so much fun that she wanted me to join in. I ran round the sprinkler a couple of times, though I was trying to avoid getting hit and registering disgruntlement when I misjudged where the gaps were and got splattered. Phoebe wanted me to jump through the sprinkler part, but I told her I didn’t want to wet my clothes. She thought I should take them off.
But what is good for a three year old is not good for a man on the cusp of being 51. And I felt that if my neighbours looked out of their bedroom window and saw me cavorting through a sprinkler with my junk bouncing around that they might judge me. Or report me to the authorities. Which is wrong. My daughter’s impulse of wanting to share this innocent pleasure was the correct one.
So I compromised and did it in my pants. Which apparently is more respectable. Though clearly slightly more ridiculous. It turns out that jumping through a sprinkler on a sunny day with your squealing child is the most fun you can have with your pants on.
As with so often, being the parent reminds me and connects me to the past and being the child. I fondly remember the excitement of following my dad round the garden as he watered the plants with a hose and him then trying to squirt me with a spray of cold water, as I ran away.
I was 28 years old.
