How To Be A Mermaid

when i was growing up, despite my announcements of becoming an artist or a doctor, deep down i really wanted to be a mermaid at weeki wachee park. these women donned mermaid tails and spent their days underwater, observed through great glass walls, breathing air from hoses hidden behind great rocks. their long hair like feathers floated behind them, their faces pinched ever so slightly from the foreign atmosphere, and they moved slowly, serenely, with a green-blue elegance that mesmerized me.
i poured over pamphlets picked up at road-side rest stops, i stuck my eyeballs to the screen at every television commercial. in our 4’ pool i would practice swimming with my legs glued together, affecting the perfect Ariel stroke. i would hold my breath for as long as i could, pushing my hair behind me like a mane, and gracefully flail my arms about. i spent days at the bottom of our pool, wondering what life like a mermaid would be like.
never once did i get to see these hypnotic women dance; my imagination was to suffice, and i had all but forgotten about them, and my dreams, until monday. hidden among the billboards announcing WE BARE ALL, and COUPLES WELCOME, i caught a heartstopping sight: two women, larger than life, with gleaming tails and flowing locks, beckoned with their pale arms and pinched faces, calling the speeding passers-by to their world. immediately i was a pot-bellied child again, flopping around in four feet of hyper-chlorinated water, singing to myself intelligible songs of the deep, pining for my two-legged love to whisk me out of the aquatic world i knew into the land of forks and breathable air.