We were never really pool people, in the sense that we never actually had a kidney-shaped body of water in our back yard in which we could urinate freely. We wanted one. The kids. But my mother was deathly afraid of pools, and my father, he didn't want the exertion of acquiring an intellectual grip on basic chlorine chemistry.

Hence, our back yard was not the aquatic oasis of the monied, or the leveraged middle class. Our yard was more like a packed-dirt wasteland for wandering pit bulls and marking tomcats, where no kid would venture for fear of entering the digestive tract of Cerberus.

Every summer, the Keith kids, fully fortified with motherly fear and skin growing translucent with solar neglect, would remain cloistered in our ranch house, our dreams of splashy fun, new floats and split hot dogs eroding faster than a whore's looks.

The Smiths, our neighbors, were the pool people. They were a glamorous set – their skin always brown in a healthy, precancerous sort of way, and their faces always full of crinkled eyes and glowing teeth. The mother Smith was tall and shapely in the smoldering modesty of her one-piece suit. The father Smith, with his well-kept quarterback looks and broad carpeted chest, would gleefully toss handsome squealing children into the blue water, and they never got mad at him. It was like a postcard of perfection, truly.

When the invitation was extended and accepted, Keiths would muster poolside with the Smiths for a study in contrasts. Their ringleted daughters and plucky sons next to our gangly lot with our creamed noses and splotchy, sizzling skin. But awkwardness has a way of evaporating as soon as songs are cranked and diving competitions begin.

I carried the conviction that if we had a pool, we would also have a life just as pretty as the Smiths'. I came close to convincing my mother of it, but then, a little girl down the street drowned in her own backyard pool, and my mom put a swift end to all lobbying efforts. We no longer accepted every invitation, and summers were never as fun.

Of the eight homes I lived in as a kid, and the four I have lived in since, not a one of them has had a pool. I would love to have one built.

There remains in me a grinning boy that believes the Smiths' beautiful life can be had by digging 12 feet below, but there is another part of me that is convinced I would only end up 6 feet under.

Hear Gordon on "The Ticket" KTCK-AM (1310) weekdays from 5:30 to 10 a.m. E-mail him at gordon@ gordonkeith.com.

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