It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about it for years, but when we were kids, more like our teens, my friend Ernesto and I used to jump in pools at Miami Beach hotels and swim around until we were asked to leave. We would tell the person telling us to leave, that we we were guests of “Billy,” a person we made up in our heads, in room 502, and we were then informed that they didn’t have a room 502.

This was back before they built the boardwalk and walking paths, and there was no security or anyone really guarding the pools. This was way before South Beach was even a concept, so the pools and hotels were dumps and we didn’t get caught very often because we were the only ones there in many cases.

I thought that we had created this whole pool thing ourselves with the fake friend in the room and all. But recently on a Facebook page that I follow about Old Miami, someone brought up the same thing – he said they would jump in the hotel pools on Miami Beach and leave when they were informed that their “Uncle Joe” was not a guest in room 206.

So funny because now people are coming out of the woodwork and commenting on that post that they all did the same thing. And Ernesto and I thought that was our thing. Ha.