Noah at the wave pool

It was a bit unsettling to be at a popular area water park standing in line behind a man with “Noah” tattooed on his left shoulder.

Could this be the Biblical patriarch who saved humanity from the Great Flood? Did he come to a water park to see all he had wrought?

But I concluded this was not that Noah.

From all the depictions I’ve seen that Noah would have worn a long robe. I’ve never seen any scripturally-derived paintings of Noah sipping a Pina Colada from a coconut on the ark’s Lido Deck in an old Hebrew Speedo.

Perhaps tattoo Noah was a supporter of the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation (NOAH), the support group for people dealing with that perplexing skin condition.

That would have been surprising, too. Like so many park patrons, his skin was lobster pink.

This Noah wasn’t even wearing any SPF 15.

You do a lot of thinking standing in line to enter a wave pool called Wowabunga!

In this sea of humanity, there’d be much more humanity than sea. I think if people were sentenced to endure what me and multitudes did yesterday the ACLU would file a class action suit.

But if people pay $32 and wait in line to do it, they for budgetary reasons convince themselves they’re having fun.

Well, I sure wasn’t.

I don’t like being amidst that many people when they’re fully clothed.

We’re taught that fashions come and go, but that immutable fact doesn’t seem to apply to swimwear.

It just keeps getting skimpier and skimpier even as our bodies get more and more expansive.

We’ve shed all our humility, but not our love handles.

Now add wave pools to the mix. They’re wonderful fun, but the ocean motion causes already flimsy garments to come undone and reveal parts of the body that should only be seen by paid medical personnel.

What would it take for the full-body one-piece to make a fashion come back? Would unsightly sunbathers don one for a fee, say if we all chipped in?

Doubtful.

Since it doesn’t look like the old one piece is ever going to make a stylish return, then perhaps we’ll have to consider legislative alternatives.

Revealing swimsuits, both male and female, could only be sold with a prescription from a qualified physician.

There’s a reason why most acts of human conception take place in the pitch dark. Seeing what we all look like in broad daylight is a turnoff obstacle to romantic coupling.

Yet there’s something about a public pool that encourages us to let it all hang out.

I have to think if Noah were around to see all he’d wrought he’d be dismayed.

He’d at least have to reconsider what he’d done, that maybe mankind, once so full of promise and vitality, wasn’t worth preserving.

Maybe he’d let the animals go two-by-two to populate the planet, but he’d think twice about unleashing man on a world still bewitched by water.

Sure, lions, hippos and elephants can all act like real animals.

But no one’s ever had to endure watching them adjust a thong after a Wowabunga wave unsettled their goodies.