The people in the building next door have a really snazzy hose that they use to fill up their dinosaur pool. This morning while they were trying to decide whether to reinvigorate their deflated dinosaur, I asked if I could use their hose to fill up the old green turtle pool we keep in the basement. We really need to get a new one. Ten years is a long life for a plastic pool. But it’ll probably make it through one more summer. 

The woman next door, a mother of four children, was happy to hand the hose over the iron fence that separates our yards. Amazingly, despite the many taped over holes on the bottom of that green plastic Little Tykes pool, the water stayed in for most of the day. Her kids ended up "swimming" in our pool and the dinosaur never got inflated.

And the kids were keeping cool on Third Street.

The hose was really the hero. What more could you want on such a hot and humid day. In certain neighborhoods, kids still open up fire hydrants to keep cool. But in Park Slope most basements have a hose and sometimes a pool.

The hose inspired lost of play: my daughter and her best friend decided to wash our downstair’s neighbor’s car using that groovy hose. And what a ball they had. It  went on for hours – and that’s one clean white car. Dressed in their swimsuits, the girls sprayed and sponged, soaped and polished.

All thanks to that hose. I’ve always thought that hoses were the perfect summer toy for children. And on a day like this, it was the perfect way to keep calm and collected and cool, cool, cool.