Again With the Pool? It's Enough With the Pool, Already.

I show up at the pool today, a Tuesday.  I show up, put on my bathing suit, shower off or up -- I take a shower - and sink into the hot tub for a couple of minutes to ensure that nothing important falls off when I start to swim.  It's 8:50.  I swim on Tuesday because there's an Aqua Fit class on Monday and Wednesday and Friday, and also on Saturday.  On Sunday the non-church-going heathens run wild in the pool from 9 until 10.  They run wild at other times during the day as well, but the 9 to 10 time slot is when they're particularly heathenish.  On Tuesday and Thursday it's a fucking free for all the entire morning.


I don't appreciate the presence of the Aqua Fit ladies.  Most of them are not too young so I'm impressed that they're in the pool doing some vigor-ish exercise but wish they would do it elsewhere.  There usually aren't too many of them, either,  and they take up the entire pool, which seems to me to be unfair and somewhat hoggish.  My choices to avoid all of this tonnage are to get up damned early so I can get to the pool with enough time to swim before the flabby arms and legs begin churning up the water.  Or I can swim afterwards, which I don't want to do for reasons that really aren't any of your business.  See, here's the problem: if I get there early I have to get there really early because there's a lot of competition for a lane from other people who also aren't doing anything productive with their time but want to get their swim in before The Invasion of The Aqua Fitters.  And afterwards there's a lot of pent up demand for a lane from everyone else who also doesn't have anything productive to do but can't even get up before 9AM or so.  It's very possible to get shut out for another half hour, which is beyond infuriating.  This leads to the unmitigated-ish disaster of having to have a late lunch and an even later nap with all of the waiting for the other swimmers to finish before I can get in the pool.  My schedule is totally detonated, making a sound like a champagne cork being released.


I quickly entered the pool, figuring 10 minutes of swimming is better than no swimming at all.  It's quite difficult to change course once I'm in my bathing suit.  It's not like I can go out to the lobby and read for an hour, not comfortably anyhow, dripping wet and nearly naked.  As I was plowing ahead I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier.  I decided, between swallows of pool water, to let the instructor, who I was pretty sure had absolutely no part in the decision to schedule the class at the last minute, feel the force of my wrath.  This lasted for a couple of laps before my ballooning anger convinced me that I would be behaving perfectly reasonably if I didn't get out of the pool until I had completed my workout, long after the ladies had also entered the pool.


"I'm not getting out," I was going to say.  "Call the manager if this is a problem."  I could see the nice lady backing off, not eager to engage an obviously deranged individual who weighed 50 pounds more than she did.  I could see a whole gaggle of ladies milling around uncomfortably, also not eager to get in the pool with some red-faced, spluttering man.  I could see all of this.


My mind was made up.  Firmly made up.