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GREENSBORO -- Dalisha Kirk is holding a ticking bomb.

The 9-year-old, known to her friends as "Pooh," has just seconds before it explodes.

Finally, she hurls it safely away -- until another kid grabs it and throws it back at her. Safe for now. But eventually, her luck runs out, and the bomb detonates with a sudden noise.

But Pooh is unscathed.

"It's water dynamite," she explains, nodding toward the waterlogged ball.

Of course, there is collateral damage. After all, there's not much room to hide from the splash in the kiddie pool.

But the game goes on.

It's all part of a summer's day at the Lindley Pool: a mix of imagination, horseplay, swimming, drifting and blatantly premeditated splashing.

Perhaps more than anything, it's a laboratory for fun.

It's fun to stomp your foot down on the wet edge of the pool, where water dripped from your bathing suit, just for the splash.

It's fun to stick your head under, wearing goggles, and scan to see what you can see on the bottom, six inches away.

It's fun to randomly fall down backwards and let water splash over you.

It's fun to run in slow motion to chase something, even if you don't get it. Doesn't matter. It'll get thrown again.

For the older kids, the scene framed by the green and yellow umbrellas shading the concrete and the power lines that run along Wendover Avenue is a little different.

For them, the lab is a little more complex.

Splashing and swimming mix with socializing, the participants a little more conscious about how they look.

Ashley Thomas loves to dunk people and do flips. But the 13-year-old enjoys the social aspect of the pool, too.

"I like to just hang out with my friends. It's a time to mingle and get to know people you don't know."

Seen from dry land, swimmers resemble volatile atoms: clusters form and then disperse, then merge together in different patterns, a constant fission and fusion in the summer heat.

But it's still a pool. Even the adults get silly.

When Randi Francis walks past the kids she's in charge of as the executive director of the Nehemiah Community Empowerment Center, they toss dripping foam balls at her when she has her back turned.

She returns fire but is outgunned, finally walking away with a grin and wet spots on her clothes.

Back in the kiddie pool, the battle is still raging.

One boy narrowly averts disaster, calling for a time out when he finds himself in a tight spot.

Pooh is a blur of limbs, splashing around, circling the pool, an eye to the dynamite.

Eventually, disaster strikes. Water gets in her eye, forcing her to stop, and the ball floats close. The timer ticks down.

"Boom!" her attacker says.

Pooh hops out, wipes her eyes with a towel, then hops back in.

And her summer resumes.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jason.hardin@news-record.com