Pool Party

Metaphor:  The use of a word or phrase to refer to something that it is not, invoking a direct similarity between the word or phrase used and the thing described.  (Ed. Note: Whew.  That's some definition).

Because everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for another one of my pool postings, here you go . . . 

First of all, please don't assume that I spend an inordinate amount of time in the pool.  I do not. I am tall and skinny and pasty-white and not the kind of person that everyone loves to see hanging around any area in a skimpy, skin-tight spandex swimming suit and flip-flops.  People look away.  I know they do.

And furthermore please don't assume that I always have problems when I'm at the swimming pool.  This is factually incorrect.  I actually have many pleasant, problem-free days at the pool except for the actual swimming part which is painful and too long and consequently not pleasant.  Other than that I don't get pissed off too often and I don't stay pissed off for too long, both good things.

There's this, too: I have problems everywhere and not just at the pool.  Given the large number of pool-related crises that crop up in my life a person might assume that all the problems I have occur at the pool.  Not true.  I'm pissed off all the time, in an infinite variety of locales, and for an uncountable number of reasons, at an infinite variety of people, places, and things.  The pool seems to be a metaphor for all of the self-righteous, indignant anger that I'm usually nursing.

Anyway, my particular pool is reserved from nine to ten every morning for something called Aquafit.  This is where a bunch of very large women flail around uselessly, from the look of things, ostensibly following the direction of an annoyingly cheerful young woman who is blasting an upbeat, jazzy pop soundtrack at an elevated volume, the noise bouncing around the large concrete tomb that is an indoor pool, creating a kind of echoey cacophony.   

The obstruction to my day - and the origin of this rant - is that the pool is off-limits to us lap-swimmers from nine to ten, ironically the exact time that it would be convenient for me to swim. Fair enough - I work around the schedule, and good for these ladies for trying to stay active.  I wish my mom would have done something similar in her heyday.  However, I have to get up and get ready to swim earlier than I would like or wait until mid-morning when most of my fading resolve to swim has faded away.  The point is that I am inconvenienced.

Today I went to an excellent morning meeting and took an excellent call from a sponsee so I was relegated to the late shift.  I got there about ten and the pool was jammed.  Most of the lanes were full of lap-swimmers but about 30% were occupied by ladies who had just had exclusive use of the pool for an hour and then decided it would be OK to bounce around some more, chatting, in whatever lanes they wanted to hog.  I sat in the hot tub for a few minutes - I had gone to war with a couple of these crones before and come out on the losing end.  Bemused, I watched a young guy come in, eye the pool, enter in some negotiations with a couple of the lane-hoggers, then pretty much climb in and start swimming.  He was a vigorous and violently bad swimmer - lots of waves and splashing - and the crones objected.  I watched them argue for a while with the kid before he got out and sat at the end of the pool until another lane opened up, smiling and shaking his head.

A little later one of the ladies joined me in the hot tub, someone I had words with a few weeks back regarding what I considered her selfish behavior.  She didn't change her behavior - imagine that, someone not taking my advice as to how the world should run.  Ironically she took some time to relate a driving story where someone was not very accommodating to what she was trying to do. 

"Some people are just rude," she said.

Yes, well, there is that.  There is the tendency of all of us to find most displeasing in others the behavior that we often exhibit.