Little leaps of faith at the pool

The sky is bright blue and so is the water shimmering in the pool, and the teenage girl is suspended between them, taking teeny-tiny steps down the length of the high diving board, looking terrified.

She makes it to the end of the board -- then looks down, which is a big mistake. It's only about 10 feet from the board to the water, but the first time she looks, it's like gazing into the depths of the Grand Canyon.

The girl squeezes her arms more tightly around her chest. Then she looks over at her friends, who are standing at the side of the pool, giggling.

"Face your fears!" she yells. And she jumps.

A moment later, she pops out of the water, grinning and pumping her fist in triumph.

There are two diving boards at the suburban Rockville, Md., Municipal Swim Center -- one high, one low -- but they're not merely diving boards.

They're also stages upon which half-naked humans of all races, creeds, colors, ages, sizes and shapes act out little scenes of fear, courage, ebullience and style while their friends cheer or jeer or groan.

Fear of lawsuits has caused some pools to dismantle their diving boards. Too bad for them. They're missing some magic moments of homegrown human comedy.

"Yesterday this girl went up on the high board and she was up there for, like, 10 minutes," says lifeguard Megan Stewart, 18, who's watching the action from beneath the umbrella on the lifeguard stand. "She was real scared, and her friends were, like, chanting her name, 'Reese! Reese! Reese!' We were all surprised when she jumped off. Most of the time when they're up there that long, they don't jump off."

Up on that board, with all the world watching, the poor girl had to decide which was scarier: jumping into the water or climbing back down the ladder to face the mockery of her friends. She opted for the water -- a wise choice.

"All the way to the tip -- two more steps," Sara Timlin urges her son Kane, 4, who is standing in the middle of the low board, wearing goofy goggles and a T-shirt, psyching himself up for the first jump he's ever made off a diving board.

He inches nervously forward. Suddenly, he jumps. Splash! He bobs up, spits out some water, dog-paddles to the side and climbs out. Then he utters his first words as a diving board veteran: "I wanna do it again!"

In Olympic diving, great athletes execute perfect pikes and tucks and somersaults under the pitiless gaze of fussbudget judges. Here, diving is less precise, more exuberant. Kids do the cannonball or the can opener or the egg drop or the butt bounce (which requires the diver to hit the end of the board with his or her rear end, then bounce up and dive in).

Or they make up their own dives on the spot, sometimes while in midair -- improvisation that frequently leads to the kind of painful belly flop that causes spectators to groan with a combination of sympathy and mirth: "Awwww! That hurt!"

Or they stand on the low board yelling, "Mom, look! Mom! Look at me!" and when Mom glances up from her paperback, they dash down the board and right off the end, legs churning in the air like cartoon characters who have run off a cliff.

Connoisseurs of this art form can discern subtle differences between the sexes: Boys tend to like cannonballs and other dives that make a big splash, while girls prefer to twirl gracefully or strike a glamorous pose in midair -- one hand perched on a hip, the other propped behind the head, like a movie star or a supermodel.

But the funniest divers might be the middle-aged men. There goes one now -- a guy with thinning hair, baggy shorts and a big watch. He climbs the nine steps to the high board, then walks gingerly to the end, sucking in his gut. He wants to show the world (and maybe himself) that he's still young and studly enough to dive off the high board, but he also knows the pain of the belly flop and does not wish to experience it again.

So he stands at the end of the board until it stops bobbing, then raises his arms over his head and slowly bends down -- lower, lower, lower -- until he sort of slides into the water.

It's a defensive dive -- the aquatic equivalent of a softball player slapping a pitch to right field rather than swinging for the fences and risking an embarrassing strikeout.

Now Melanie Doan, 8, bounds up to the high board. She's been jumping off it since she was 3, says her mother, Leigh Broadhurst, 40, a research scientist.

"Do your flip, Mel," Broadhurst says.

Melanie skips jauntily down the board, bounces off the end and effortlessly executes a perfect flip. Then she climbs out of the pool and does it again.

"I told my kids I'd do a back flip off the high board," Broadhurst says. She sounds a little nervous. "I'll do it," she adds, "but I've just got to gather all my witnesses."

She rounds up Melanie and a few other kids and tells them to watch. She climbs to the high board, walks to the end and turns around so her back is to the pool. She pauses a moment, her eyes ablaze with intensity, then she bends her knees, springs into the air, flips backward and slices into the water. Perfect.

The kids watch, then wander off. By the time Broadhurst climbs out of the pool, they're gone.

"I guess they weren't impressed," she says, smiling.

Nearby, 3-year-old Michael Fellman is jumping up and down on the deck near the low board.

"Go off the high dive," he tells his father. "Hurry! Hurry!" His father, Mark Fellman, 41, an engineer, is happy to oblige. Jumping off the high board can make a man a hero to his son -- if his son is young enough. Fellman climbs the ladder and jumps off, arms flailing theatrically.

Michael laughs.

His brother Ben, 7, climbs onto the low board.

"He's a cannonballer," his father says. "Let's see a big splash, Ben!" Ben jumps off, curls into a ball, and lands in a blast of water.

"He almost went off the high board today," Ben's father says, smiling. "He made it up to the top and then he looked and then he came down."

"It felt, like, a little scary," Ben explains.

"When do you think you'll go off it?" his father asks.

"Next year," Ben says.