Treading Water

While Wifey was fighting her way into the DMV to finally get her South Carolina license (so she can get unemployment benefits) I went to the pool to get a work out and cool off after packing all day. My back was hurting and I was hoping to stretch my back out. I was wandering back and forth across the pool, rotating my back, and water jogging. I looked like an idiot.

It occurred to me that no matter what public pool you're at, there are always the same people. There's always the parent that brings like 18 kids with them, but doesn't watch them. They usually sit on the side sunbathing or reading, while their kids take over the pool. When I did start swimming, I had to bob and weave in and out of kids splashing, wrestling, and throwing noodles everywhere. I wanted to choke each and everyone of the kids ruining my laps, but again it was a public pool. They were having fun and childhood is short.

Another person is the overly tanned, slightly burned person, laying out in the sun. There's a reason why skin cancer numbers are on the rise, its these people. In the winter they hit the tanning booths and turn their skin orange. In the summer they lay out all day. They might look tan, but definitely not attractive. There were two of these types of people, turning their skin to leather.

The third person, is the one that has no shame even though they should. The thing is, today this person was hitting on me. She was about forty five or fifty years old, was well overweight, (not quiet obese) had from what I could tell had at least one child, and had nasty burned skin peeling. I could tell she had been out of the dating game for a while because she approached with, "Do you live in the apartment complex?" I said "yes" and she excitedly said, "Me too." This would've been a valid question and response if it were some sort of coincidence that we lived in the same complex had it not been for the fact that we were currently in said apartment complexes pool. Unless I was an outsider that went out of my way to swim in this pool, I lived here. She pointed to her building which was on the other side of the complex from where I lived and continued talking in her high pitched, sorority girls, flirty, excited voice as if our lives were one large similar coincidence.

The ladies kid eventually jumped in the pool and lost one of her arm floaties causing half of her body to fall below the water level. The mom broke off my conversation to grab her toddler and then yell at the toddler all the way out of the gates. My first though was, "Am I this attractive and approachable that this lady felt comfortable enough to approach me with obvious intentions?" Then almost immediately my brain jumped the other way and I thought, "Am I I looking out of shape and old enough to be approached by ugly 45 year old moms?" I immediately picked up the pace doing twice as many laps, in double the amount of time, wanting desparately to tighten up enough to possibly fit into my own age group. I even resorted to doing push ups on the pool deck and vowed never to stray to this pool again without my wife in tow.