I’m not sure when I began disliking the water. As a kid, I played in front of open fire hydrants, or splashed in the gushing torrents that unleashed to run down our street of row homes along the gutter. Little kids used to come out in their underpants to splash in that water and laugh and enjoy the sudden pleasure.

Neighborhood kids would “play in the water” from a hose even more often. No one, at first, had swimming pools, so folks would squirt garden hoses at the children. (I should mention that while the hose was a benign tool in that sense, it was also used for nefarious purposes. You don’t live jammed into row houses without some infighting occurring now and then. If Mrs. Stiehl was squirting the hose and cleaning off the sidewalk and street in front of her house and water just happened to reach the other side of the street where Mrs. Kolavage lived — these women despised each other mostly — a grand water fight would begin, accompanied by two grown, soaking-wet women skittering around in the street, adult screeching and bellowing. It was best to stay clear of something like this.)

Eventually, those little wading pools became popular. We’d set ours up on the small landing in front of the front door and splash away the heat.

Those pools evolved into larger round or square or rectangular pools. There was no room for anything larger.

Someone always had a bootleg fire plug wrench, though. The city eventually gave up fighting community use of fire plugs and started providing a doo-dad that would turn the ferocious roar of the hydrant into a more pleasant spray.

About the only time I chose to go under the plug, as it was called, was when an attractive girl was doing the same. Enough about that.

I also went swimming with my folks. We went to Wildwood for years when I was little and I loved the ocean.

We went to Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island after that and, although only brave souls dared the rough ocean, we always lolled the hours away on the bay side.

My grandmother had a place for a few years at Pierce’s Point, on the Delaware Bay. I loved the water there. It was there I started dreaming of becoming a SCUBA diver. I should have known that would never happen, because I couldn’t really swim very well.

After that, I don’t really recall when or where I got wet.

But I became one of those guys who hates getting wet. In the shower, even, I avert my face from the spray. I’ve done that since I can’t remember when.

We have an above-ground pool at home. The last time I was in it was about 1999. That’s just a guess.

So now, because of arthritis in my hips, the doctor wants me to walk in water. My hips. Does this make me a hipster?

So, that’s what I am doing, despite the fact that it most certainly involves getting wet.

As long as I don’t have to get my face wet.