you know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The neighborhood pool on the 4th of July.
It’s 102 degrees outside and white people are disintegrating like charcoal briquettes saturated with lighter fluid.
The sky is an endless blue and the sun is burning a hole in the sky.
As I walk in, I notice a lot of jiggling bellies, bouncing, sagging. America needs to take more pride, I think to myself.
If you are going to wear that swim suit, wouldn’t you look in the mirror first? Wouldn’t you tuck that excess flesh into your wait band?
Sadly, women are wearing bikini’s where full body suits would suffice. Ass crack pushing out, cellulite dancing a nasty jig. It’s just a visual felony happening before me.
And the men are no better. Dudes strutting around as if they are world class swimmers wearing speedos. Instead they are beer guzzling hippos who have love handles that double as boat bumpers.
It’s just unattractive.
The pool is all ready packed and it is only 11am. Every lounge chair is taken, inhaled by a phalanx of asses that could double as troop carriers.
White skin is lathered in lotion. It’s a blinding sheen of virgin epidermis.
Sweat trickles down the side of my face and into my mouth. Yuk. This is ridiculous. How hot is too hot to actually go outside, I think to myself.
I open the sun screen top. The intense heat has created a pressure inside the Coppertone tube. The cream surges out, in a steaming hot puddle of white goo. It is like a volcanic explosion and will not stop seeping out of the tiny hole. I try and stop it, applying SPF to my nose and cheeks, and still the liquid keeps erupting.
I get up, my fingers covered in white. I move to the pool, the heat burning my heels. I stare at the water in the pool. There is a sheen of sun product floating on the surface that makes me a little nauseous. It reminds me of the BP spill in the Gulf without the Coast Guard interaction.
The ground is burning my feet, so I jump in and submerge, allowing the cooler water to take the edge off.
I pop up and the lingering taste of chlorinated body stench sits on my lips.
YUK
There is a long black hair stuck to my eye lid. It is gross and I want it off me. I feel like I’m bathing in someone else’s used bath water.
I hate the community pool on days like this. This water needs to be quarantined by the CDC.
I suspiciously eye the life guards staring out at nothing, dreaming of 6pm when he gets to take his hot girlfriend to an air conditioned theater.
I want to ask him when the last time he checked this petri dish of nasty. I bite my tongue.
I’m floating in a mildly cool sess pool with life guard stands. Happy 4th.
I keep spitting the water off my lips, afraid that some of the Ebola virus will leak into my body.
A couple of older women begin asking me questions about the heat, the pool, local burn bans in the county.
I am cordial, but I my head is sizzling like bacon in the pan. My brain is not ready for a discussion on neighborhood fireworks issues.
Oh my. Please, someone make them stop.
I wish them a happy 4th and head back to my lounge chair.
Thank God I was smart enough to pack a few cans of Corona.
Yum.
It is cold and delicious.
I am proud to be American, but happier to be drinking a Mexican Cerveza.
As I relax on the lounge chair, I watch a group of young parents. They are chasing toddlers, half hunched over, their arms extended, making sure their young ones don’t fall or slip in the pool or stub a toe. I would think children under the age of 4 are more flammable than the rest of us. I wait anxiously for a child to ignite.
So much work, so much concern. No time for a beer. Poor new parents. They are sweating profusely and there is no end in sight. They have heat stroke and don’t even know it.
Watching these young parents and the heat suddenly doesn’t feel so hot. The lounge chair feels a little more comfortable, and the air a little cooler.
I notice an American flag flapping nearby.
It’s good to be an American, I think. No more bitching about petri dish pools and sagging waist lines.
Bring on the heat. I’m an American. I take it.
Time for one more Cerveza.
Happy Quatro de Julio mis amigos.
And that is crazy.™