I Can Barely Take Care of Myself by Jen Kirkman

spend my vacation feeling uncomfortable in a bathing suit around boys, I’d buy a round-trip ticket on a time machine and go back to 1987, when I was called “boobless” by two boys back on Duxbury Beach in Massachusetts. Sure, I have boobs now, but I also have a stomach. There was probably a six-month window of time when I was nineteen when my boobswere of a good size and I had no stomach flab—that girl would look great in a bikini if she weren’t busy trying to be “grunge” in her oversize flannel shirts.



Sarah squinted and looked toward the far end of the pool. She pointed at what appeared to be two eight-year-old girls splashing. “Look! Over there!”
    “Where. Is. Their. Mo-therrr?” I asked Sarah, overemphasizing every word like a total bitch.
    “I don’t know. This is ridiculous,” Sarah said. “I mean, there are ten kids’ pools here! They need this one too?!”
    The waitress arrived and brought usour drinks. “Is everything okay?” she asked. Sarah immediately masked her rage. “Everything’s great. Yeah.” Liar. I nodded and smiled. The waitress walked away. Our confidence came back. “Well, this is total bullshit,” I said. “I’m totally going to say something to somebody.” Just as the “somebody” I could say “something” to was completely out of reach.
    Sarah and I watched the mothers of thechildren who so boldly ignored the sign. The moms sat in their lounge chairs, slathering on their lotion. Mom no. 1 yelled toward the pool in that loud voice that moms are forced to use to be heard above screaming kids.
    “Hey, Jessica, come here. Let me put some more sunblock on you! Yes. Yes, you do need more sunblock. It’s high noon. Jessica! Come here right now. You can get right back in!”
    Why didn’t Jessica’s mom walk over to the pool and talk, in a normal voice, to her child, who shouldn’t even have been in the adult pool to begin with? How would I know? I’ve never had a kid. I don’t understand why it’s fun to spend a vacation screaming into the ears of your innocent children on a warm Maui afternoon—especially when you end up screaming into the ear of an innocent childfree womanwho is just trying to pretend to read her InStyle magazine’s greatest haircuts edition as she secretly eavesdrops on other cabana conversations.
    Then Mom no. 2 yelled to her daughter, who was even farther away than little Jessica. “Ashley, do you want me to get you one of those rubber tubes? Which one do you want? Huh?! Which one?! No, which one ? The inner tube that you sit in and not the foamroller? Okay. Okay.”
    Ashley’s mom walked past Sarah and me on her way to the kids’ pool to rent a toy for her kid, to bring back for her to play with in the forbidden adult pool.
    As she passed us, I said loudly, “It’s not very quiet here today. These cabanas were expensive. It would be nice to have some quiet.”
    In her best loud-on-purpose voice, Sarah said, “I know. This is the adult pool,right? Kids aren’t allowed?”
    That was the extent of our confrontation with Ashley’s mom—a hopefully-she-heard-us level of passive-aggressive commentary. She returned with an inner tube and Jessica and Ashley climbed in, got comfortable, and floated around in the adult pool, which continued to be populated with nonadults. I felt like I was at a strip club with my family—these things just don’tgo together.
    After a lunchtime margarita, we got a little more confident. Before she could walk away, Sarah said to our waitress, “Um, so, kids aren’t allowed in this pool, right? This is the adult pool?”
    The waitress agreed. “Yes. This is the adult pool.”
    Sarah, in her best yeah-I-know-I’m-being-a-C-word voice, asked, “Sooooo, what’s that?” pointing at our new nemeses Jessica and Ashley.
    The waitress turned and noticed the girls. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t know.”
    I added, “And I think those boys in the hot tub are definitely under eighteen.” I immediately felt