pain in the lane

It's crazy white heat Iowa weather and the indexes hover near 120 degrees and Death Valley looks polar bear cool right about now.  I care for children all day and I feed my father hamburger steak tonight but my head is at the pool, my pool, my turquoise cool haven.

I hand Sonny raspberry pie under Saran wrap, grab that pink swimsuit, close the door and I am gone, baby, gone.

I crawl down Rhomberg avenue at 21.5 mph, thanks to the clueless mullet-haired fellow in front of me and then I am there, pulling into the parking lot and now it's my turn.

I tell Dave I am possessive about the swim lane.  I am there for one full hour and I expect to be able to swim  without interruption, without thinking, without needing to zigzag around other citizens who are clearly not there to swim.

There are seven people in the adult swim lane, a narrow channel designed to comfortably hold two swimmers. There is the couple who want to make out, fondle shamelessly , add undesirable body fluids to the already contaminated water. Three male swimmers who need to be big and bold and testosteroney and kick and splash and spew water into my already compromised sinus tracts.  And two swimmers who insist on doing a back stroke or a face-under-the-water slow crawl, neither are good choices with this many people. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO SEE WHAT'S IN FRONT OF YOU, KMART SHOPPERS or better yet,  PICK A LANE, NUMBNUTS.  I watch a few head-on crashes with malicious glee.

 It would be senseless to swim in the other pool areas as they are filled with leaping, screaming, fighting children trying to outshout, outdunk, outpluverize each other.  Lifeguards are weary of the whistle wailing in their ears and walk around in a glazed daze wishing they had taken the Burger King job.

Seven, usually a good number, not tonight, it is like swimming upstream in whitewater rapids. I corner a few of the swimmers and say, in my best kindergarten teacher singsong voice, let's do this, we'll swim in a long continuous loop and this will avoid collisions.  They squint at me wondering what kind of anal retentive old lady is this and continue to swim in their Claude Kadiddlehopper  fashion.  'Cause girls and boys just wanna have fun I guess, and they do not have a mission from God to complete like I do.