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Posts Tagged ‘swimming pool’

  1. My Top Pet Peeves About the Women’s Locker Room

    June 29, 2014 by Diane

    Complaint department

    When it comes to the women’s locker room at the pool where I swim, I could list my top pet peeves. But I won’t.

    I’d have to list all those gross things. Like the globs of hair that swirl together into clumps and plaster themselves over the drain like roadkill, so I’m forced to tread water when I shower.

    I’d have to point out that six-year-old girls should use their “normal voices” in a tiled room, because their shrill tones will puncture the eardrums of all who enter.

    I’d have to admit that if a five-year-old boy is dragged into the locker room by his mother while she suits up, he should not spend the entire time staring at me—and only me—while I shower, with a blank expression on his face. Like he’s watching the test pattern on television.

    I’d have to reveal that all is not kosher in the women’s locker room. There are bare butts resting on the wooden benches where I set my gym bag. There are piles of white skin that someone has filed off her feet—piles that could fill a salt shaker. There are women who think nothing of bending over when toweling off, leaving me face-to-cheeks with a total stranger as I tie my shoe.

    I’d have to say something about that certain someone who sings Barry Manilow tunes in the shower. I’d have to point out that Barry Manilow wrote songs specifically designed to permanently lodge in the brain. Like water in the ear, they’re impossible to shake out.

    I’d have to mention how some people presume that if you accidentally leave a bottle of conditioner on the shower room shelf, it’s up for grabs. Even if it’s your favorite conditioner. And the manufacturer no longer makes it. I’ll give you a tip: don’t bother racing back to claim it. The bottle will be empty.

    I’d have to tell about the time a teensy-weensy field mouse scurried into the locker room and hid in a woman’s shoe. The shrill tones of a passel of six-year-olds are nothing compared to the screams of a woman encountering something warm and furry with her bare foot.

    I could list my pet peeves…but that would be complaining.

    Even though that’s what humor writers do. Complain.

    Humorists get paid to complain. For thirty minutes a comic will stand up in front of an audience and complain. Take my wife…please! Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles made a career out of complaining.

    The thing about complaints is that whatever it is we complain about is usually something that we do ourselves. We’re just irked that someone else is getting away with it.

    I’ll admit, the longer my hair gets, the more I find it lying about in places other than my head. But it’s blondish, so it’s not as obvious as those black clumps that would keep a wig maker in business for months. I’ve been known to sing in the shower, and have occasionally used a voice that’s in the range of a dog whistle. I’ve probably stared without realizing I was staring at a naked woman while she showers, and might have bent over without being mindful of the person sitting next to me. And yes, I’ve used someone else’s conditioner. But it was a pink bottle, and the stuff smelled like bubble gum, and it probably belonged to one of those six-year-old eardrum-splitters. Yeah, it was ME who used it.

    But I didn’t drain the bottle.

    And I’ve never filed my feet in public. That’s just wrong.

    And I’ve never tried to hide in somebody’s shoe.

    But that’s only because I wouldn’t fit.

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: ,,,, | 11 Comments

  2. The Message in the Madness

    March 10, 2014 by Diane

    Business woman looking, isolated on white

    He tries to slip into the library unnoticed, a thin, elderly Japanese man wearing a beige work shirt and beige trousers rolled at the cuffs, brown moccasins and socks. But as the official Observer of Humanity, I notice him from my post at a table near the window where I’ve set up my laptop.

    He carries a plastic grocery bag overflowing with papers: junk mail, newspapers—I’ve seen him grab a stack of free literature by the front door and stuff that into the sack. He lays a paper towel on a table, and another on the wooden chair, but he doesn’t sit. He stands there, systematically reading each piece of paper with a pair of long-handled shears in one hand. Then he proceeds to cut the papers up—clipping coupons?—but the scissors veer off in strange directions and he clips each piece into strips, and the strips into pieces, until the pieces are shreds.

    He’s a human shredder!

    One day The Human Shredder arrives with his usual plastic grocery bag, but instead of pulling out the scissors and junk mail he slides out a couple of paper plates fit together like clam shells. He sits down, lifts the top plate off and sets it aside, revealing a hamburger. When he pulls out a pair of chopsticks, I stop writing. He has my full attention.

    With the chopsticks he transports the top bun to the empty plate. Then he snatches up the tomato slice and sets it on the bun, followed by the onion slice and the pickles. He peels off the yellow cheese, adding that to the growing stack, picks up the meat patty, examines it, and sets it aside. Lastly, the bottom bun gets his perusal and it too is added to the stack.

    I wait, wondering how he’s going to eat the hamburger with the chopsticks.

    He lifts the bottom bun—which is now the top bun—off the burger and places it face up on the empty plate. Then he transfers the meat patty, switching everything back: the cheese, the pickles, the onion, the tomato. The woman sitting next to him is noticing too: she has an expression on her face that says, Are you going to play with your food or are you going to eat that, because there are children starving in this world.

    The man is rearranging his food. When he cuts up the newspaper, he’s rearranging the words. I have a friend whose mother-in-law rearranges the kitchen cabinets when visiting. Some people have this need to take the world apart and put it back together again in a way that makes sense to them, or soothes them, or fits their reality.

    When I was five, I started a book club with a couple of neighborhood kids. We sat around a card table in my bedroom and ripped pages out of picture books…until my parents walked in. End of club. Looking back now, my mother tells me I was destroying the books to create new ones. I suspect it was my anxiety disorder manifesting at an early age.

    At the pool where I swim, a plump German woman takes endless showers in the locker room. She uses a long loofah and scrubs her skin, starting at her neck and working her way down, scrubbing every crevice, then starting all over again. On the tiled wall a sign reads Please Limit Your Shower Time to Five Minutes. But she ignores the sign. Or she can’t read English. When I catch her eye, she doesn’t falter. Her face is full of pain, but she can’t stop.

    I want to walk over and place my palms along her cheeks (the ones located between her ears) and tell her it’s all right, she’s clean enough. But it won’t matter. Her brain is stuck in a groove. Her synapses are firing a warning that if she doesn’t wash every inch of her body five times, or seven times, or whatever the magic number is, then something bad will happen. The Japanese man can’t just eat the hamburger. He needs to complete the ritual of rearranging it three times.

    There’s no shame in anxiety. We telegraph it all the time…some better than others. The trick is to recognize it. Say, Hello, anxiety. I know who you are. I won’t fight you. Welcome. Now what are you trying to tell me?

    Anxiety has a language all its own. If we pause with the scissors, the chopsticks, the loofah, and just listen, we’ll hear its message.

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  3. Go, Daddy, Go

    July 12, 2013 by Diane

    aqua noodles dumbbells

    On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the water buffalos descend upon the pool where I swim.

    “Water buffalos” is the lifeguard’s affectionate term for the group of older women who wear pink baseball caps and long-sleeved body gloves over their one-piece bottom-heavy swimsuits. They gingerly make their way down the ladder into the deepest part of the shallow end as a  younger, fit woman cranks up a portable radio and they all groove to the music.

    That is to say they engage in water aerobics, which is so un-aerobic that their hearts don’t notice.

    The instructor starts off with some easy stretches that the buffalos take a stab at until someone comes up with a story about the crockpot and the husband, or the husband who happens to be a crockpot; I’m never close enough to hear more than snatches of the conversation. The instructor, meanwhile, is sprinting back and forth along the edge of the pool to Gene Kelly’s rendition of Singing in the Rain, shouting out encouragement. One buffalo tries a half-hearted jog in place, and the others drift down to the opposite end talking about Katy Couric and Dr. Phil; I’m not entirely certain if the two are an item, but they are definitely worth a jolly discussion in the deep part of the shallow end of the city pool. The instructor moves on to jumping jacks as the radio blares go, daddy, go go go. The buffalos wave their arms in the air while underwater their feet in rubber shoes kick from side to side in slow motion. I swim five more laps and the buffalos are hard at work firming their underarm flab, swinging Styrofoam noodles from side to side. Another ten laps and they’re hefting Styrofoam dumbbells in the vicinity of their heads and swapping stories about arthritic joints.

    I think the buffalos are onto something here. This is a much healthier social scene than Facebook. While hundreds of thousands are slumped in front of their laptops or over their iPhones typing itinerary for their friends to view, these old gals are hefting Styrofoam and swapping gossip. Granted, their jaws are getting most of the exercise, but at least they’re together, in the flesh (sometimes more than I care to see), in fifty degree weather, which, for a Californian, is rugged weather.

    I heard Hal Niedzviecki, the author of The Peep Diaries, on NPR talking about social media, and how he invited all seven hundred of his online “friends” to a party. We’ll meet at such-and-such a bar on such-and-such a day at such-and-such a time, and one person showed up. One person. The point he was making is that the great thing about social media is that there’s no more commitment than showing up at your keyboard in your pajamas.

    The buffalo gals are hardy souls. They strap on their suits, their hats and their rubber shoes, and commit to engaging with their fellow buffalos.

    Go, daddy, go.

    Category Ain't Life Grand | Tags: ,, | No Comments

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