First, an admission:

I pee in swimming pools.

I blame this on my early surfing days, around Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. The water there is freezing, fifty degrees at the height of summer freezing, so people surf wearing wetsuits.

And even so, they get cold. Really cold. Cold enough that peeing in a wetsuit, something that initially sounds utterly and ridiculously repulsive, starts to seem like a perfectly reasonable idea, an efficient and convenient way to warm up.

Which is to say, like pretty much all Northern California surfers, I have frequently peed in my wetsuit. And, frankly, it’s only a small, small step from that to just peeing in pools in general.

Of course, I don’t do it without a sense of guilt. Or, more to the point, without a sense of fear. Fear of the chemical that turns pool-pee red.

I don’t know when or where I first heard of this stuff, but it was clearly early in childhood, as it’s stuck with me as a vividly imagined threat ever since. If I pee in a pool, I let out just the tiniest bit, then wait to make sure there’s no color change.

Or, at least, I did. Until this afternoon. When, after a conversation with my brother David about that chemical, I Googled it up to find out more about how it worked.

At which point, I was stunned by the, in retrospect totally obvious, discovery that the red-turning pee-triggered pool chemical [doesn’t exist at all](http://www.snopes.com/science/poolpiss.asp)! It’s just something lifeguards tell kids to keep them from the exact same sort of pool-peeing in which I’ve been engaging.

I’m thrilled by this revelation. And will also now totally understand if you don’t invite me to your next pool party.