The neighborhood pool when I was a kid had a 14' depth and a high dive. It probably wasn't that high but to a little kid, it was like a skyscraper.
I remember summoning every ounce of courage just to climb the latter and jump off. Not dive, mind you, just jump.
After I did this, I spent the rest of the day climbing back up jumping over and over again from that high dive.
I used to love the exhiliration and the water pressure I'd feel by trying to swim to the bottom and touch the concrete 14' below the surface.
I never wore a bike helmet either. And some of the playground equipment was made from steel. And we had bb guns and Estes rockets.
It is a wonder I survived childhood.
Sure, at one end of the olympic-sized pool there's a large semi-enclosed kiddie area. But the main pool gradually deepens, fully half is about 6 or more feet deep, and adjoining the deep end is a diving board "cube" about 30 X 30 X 15 feet deep.
You can tell by the marks on the cement they once had a tremendous trio of diving boards of all heights. All gone...
Remember high dives??!!
Remember when Americans were allowed to be BOLD!!!!!!
Ain't that the truth. I look around and, yes, many of the things we did 30+ years ago (wow, I'm old) had more than a little measure of danger in them. I got bloody noses from dodgeball; I jammed a lot of fingers playing basketball and volleyball and got smacked in the face with the ball a few times; I fell off swings onto hard ground and flipped my bicycle landing on my head. A favorite neighborhood activity was jumping off a seven foot concrete block wall onto the street below. (What were we thinking?) We all survived and, more importantly, we learned from the times when someone did something stupid and/or got hurt. That was an important life lesson that I fear we're removing from our children's lives.