no duckie required.

One of my fondest childhood memories would have to be the summertime foam parties.

My brothers and sisters know exactly what I'm talkin' about.

We grew up in the inner city of East Baltimore where it was hot, humid, heavy, and oh so sticky during the summer months. Especially July and August. That allowed at least 8 weeks of buying a new rubber pool from Monument Street or from Ames, taking it out the box, unrolling it, watching the sides annoyingly flop over and inwards as we tried to lay it outside to fill it with water. But once a normal amount of water slowly flowed in from our unusually low pressured hose, the sides would stay put.
We let it fill up for a few hours.. waiting impatiently in our cramped, HOT house. A house built in the early 1900s that would have never handled any sort of AC. My 2 little brothers, my older brother and I would peak through the backdoor, drooling at the pool nestled on top of the concrete but underneath the cool shade of our tiny row home backyard.
Once filled and having fun in our 18 inch pool, the day would pass and you could notice all of the use it had throughout the whole day. Everyday was like this.. from noon to about 8pm we would turn into prunes..actually, whatever the next level after that would be.
Many of the neighborhood kids would pick on us when we'd play outside. Granted we were the only white family on the block so that in and of itself puts us on display. The neighborhood kids, you could see the look on their faces and thinking "what in the hell are those crazy white kids doing?"
But once our mom brought the bottle of "Joy" or "Dawn" dish detergent outside to hand over, we definitely didn't care about those kids. We were getting ready for our baths.
And it was the most fun ever.
Each of us 4 would sprinkle some of the liquid into the pool and wave all 8 of hands around in the water, making a spectacular amount of bubbles. BUBBLES YES. We knew we'd have to work together on this because the more we did the more white bubbles we could make.
We'd make so much that the bubbles would overflow from the pool and we were covered in so much of it we looked like 4 abominable snowmen. I noticed a few times our mom peaking through the back screen door, smiling and giggling. I reminded her of this summertime fiasco the other day and she remembers it and still laughs.