The painted depth number

A child stands on the number each summer, looks down between two feet planted just outside the black-and-white numerals, and asks a parent what it means before wading forward into water that is, as advertised, four feet deep at that exact point and not an inch more or less by any promise the paint can make. The digits are stenciled directly into the poured concrete or set into the tile coping in a contrasting color, most often black on white or white on dark blue, sized to be legible from a standing adult's eye line rather than from underwater, which makes the number nearly useless to the one population, small children treading water, who most need to read it. Regulations require the marking at maximum and minimum depth and at every slope transition, repeated along both sides of the pool, so a rectangular pool can carry a dozen or more of these markers without anyone counting them as a set. Paint fades unevenly depending on which numbers get walked over most: the entry-point depths near the steps wear to a ghost within two seasons, while a number at the deep end near the diving well, crossed less often on foot, keeps its edges sharp for years. Some municipalities have shifted to raised tile numerals, cast in relief so the number survives resurfacing and can be read by touch as well as sight, a change made less for aesthetics than for a lawsuit somewhere upstream that nobody at the pool deck ever heard the details of. The number at the shallow end still reads three feet in many pools built before 1975, a depth that would not pass current code and was simply grandfathered in, repainted each spring in the same numeral it has always had.

Arthur Pell