Thursday, August 8, 2013

greg, are you there?

I am trying to swim in our city pool. And it's not easy when there is only one lap lane and it's filled with cretins who think they can swim but can't and they keep interrupting my routine.  God, I hate people, always have. One very big fellow has six pounds of dreadlocks coiled around his head and he's wearing large orange sunglasses. He can only swim ten yards and then holds onto the rope breathing heavily and I think persons carrying extreme poundage should wear more than just the basic swim gear. How about those Chinese silk pajamas with the long sleeves and pants and the ever popular yet sensible elastic waist. It would make gazing around the pool a more attractive activity.

Two other people are walking, damn it walking, in my swim area and I give them my cool hand Luke look, booga booga, leave this place, get outa my way. And then Husband joins me and I assign him outside my lane, there's just so much a dedicated swimmer can handle when surrounded by amateurs.


And then there's the screaming fifty teen-agers trying to prove they are the coolest by shoving and splashing their opposite genders and I vaguely remember this ritual.  Greg Hammel was a rotten little weasel-faced kid who threw snowballs at me when I was in the fourth grade and he put rocks inside their icy centers. Some delusional grown-up actually said to me, "oh that's because he likes you." What would he do if he loved me? Come at me with a chainsaw?  Greg was in love with the idea of me having a concussion.

I need to leave and I mouth to Husband, "LOUD" and move towards the ladder. He says,"this isn't loud." No, of course not, this is the normal noise level of your family parties.  I come from a family of cave dwellers who were loathe to answer the phone or attend pretty much any social event and they lingered in quiet, self-absorbed pools dwelling on their navals or whatever.

I need to go home. There are trailer trash people all around me, people who have homemade tattoos, the kind they carved onto their arms with a ball point pen during GED class before they got kicked out. People who keep losing their kids and don't seem to care as they laugh it up behind their tobacco-stained teeth. People who let their pre-teen daughter wear a bikini bottom labeled Wild Thing and whose kids I keep fishing out of the deep end because no one is watching them.

And I'm thinking this situation might be calling for a Greg Hammel kind of solution.


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2 comments:

Arizaphale said...

I usually quite like people but this post has almost converted me. Just as well I don't like swimming. When I have indulged, it is at the most uninhabited pools ever with minimum numbers of real swimmers to judge either my pale, jelly like flesh or my appalling breaststroke.

Dan Fallon said...

Great post. I could have written it. Would anyone know if you put a form of itching powder in the pool? Or something that makes urine turn bright blue? Should make for interesting watching. Like wear a formal gown to the pool, sit in a chair and just watch stuff.