Pool for sale

I think I’ll sell my swimming pool on eBay.

My wife’s sold a few things on eBay -- mostly books; we have many, many books -- and my first reaction was: “You can sell things on eBay? I thought eBay only existed to deliver things to our home!”

Once we got past that, I cast about for other household items we don’t use anymore, and I came up with a great idea: I’ll sell the pool.

A very nice swimming pool came with this house when we bought it. The pool has decorative rocks cemented around the edge and a functioning waterfall. I dutifully keep it all clean and chemically balanced.

Nobody uses it.

We keep meaning to go swimming, but the sun is too hot and the water’s too cold and we’ve already done our hair and one does hate to go to bed reeking of chlorine. Whimper, whine.

I’ve reached the age of 52, the Chinese Year of the White Grub, when I am much too fat and pale to go around without a shirt, even in the privacy of my fenced back yard. Last time, NASA complained that the glare interfered with satellite reception.

Our sons use friends' pool because they've got diving boards. Or they just go jump in the lake, usually with a cell phone in a pocket.

My wife’s got no time for swimming. She’s busy watering all her plants, keeping them alive in the summertime heat, moving them around the patio like wilting chess pieces.

So we don’t really need our pool this summer. I wonder how much I could get for it on eBay.

Selling it presents certain problems, the main one being that the pool’s made of concrete sunk into the ground behind our house. Don’t know if the customer would have to dig it out in pieces or airlift it or what to get it out of there.

And we’d have to replace the pool with something. That would have to be part of the deal. We can’t just leave a ragged hole there, like somebody pulled a big old tooth out of the yard!

My sons would prefer some sort of concrete bunker where they could play electrified music really loudly without being overheard by the short-sighted world, which doesn’t understand them and their music. Failing that, they’d take a selection of concrete skateboard ramps.

Maybe we could replace the pool with a huge planter, so my wife could have even more flora and weeds and bugs to keep her fussing and hopping all day.

To me, the best thing about the pool is the view. I enjoy looking out at the patio and pool from my traditional spot on the sofa under the air-conditioning vent. The “picture” is so lovely and serene, it could be a screensaver. The sight of palm trees always make me feel like I’m on vacation. A few weeds in the foreground, but never mind.

So I’d vote that we put in a low-maintenance mural of a swimming pool. A nice blue David Hockney painting. I could still have my California view, I could turn a buck on the deal and some lucky eBay shopper gets the swimming pool of his dreams.

Extra shipping charges apply.