You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Life Guard Gestapo.
Whistle.
“Walk please.”
It didn’t seem out of the ordinary at first.
Whistle.
“Walk please.”
But soon a warm summer day at the pool became less about relaxation and more about…
Whistle.
“Hey you, stop running.”
The lifeguard is a 16-year-old boy.
Whistle.
“No running.”
He has a short black haircut and big mirrored sun glasses. His face is emotionless. He seems to be part robot, part Hitler Youth.
Whistle.
“Stop running.”
While the other 2 guards sit at their respective life guard stations. He is standing. He is 10 feet in the air, glaring down on the pool like a hawk circling a field looking for prey.
Tweet.
“Walk please.”
The whistle glistens in the sun, a cold tool of his control. It is poised, ready, clenched between his teeth, ready to tweet at an infraction’s notice.
Whistle.
“No running.”
Other life guards swing their whistles around their wrists, like airplane propellers. The whistles are a blur as the cord shortens and finally stops. Then the guards swing their whistles the other way repeating the process.
To these other guards, the whistles are a mechanism, a toy, an object that helps pass the day on a hot summer’s afternoon.
These guards are attentive, but not intrusive. Their whistles are a tool should they need it.
None of the other guards blows their whistle a single time.
They don’t need to.
The Guard Gestapo is filling the air with righteous whistle toots from high above.
Tweet
“No running please.”
I have been at the pool about 5 minutes and the guard Gestapo has blown his whistle at least 5 times.
Whistle.
“Stop running.”
He has blown it so many times, It has become conspicuous.
It has become obvious, like black fingerpaint on a freshly painted white wall.
The sound track of the pool is normally pretty common place.
Music from a terrible radio station. Muffled buzz of adults talking. Occasional shrill of kids playing.
Whistle.
“No running!”
Seldom is the whistle toot part of the fray.
Today it is a manifesto of control and constant interruptions.
Whistle.
“No running please.”
Initially I become aware of the festering anger when a man in a red hat in the pool finally bellows out.
“Really? That was running. Really.”
His eyes are staring at the 16-year-old boy in the chair above.
The adult man, a father, in his mid 40’s is glaring at the teen. It is not normal. It is angry, it is confrontational. If this was a bar, someone would be asked to step outside.
The teen is robotic, cold, Nazi like. He has been given orders from the pool management to enforce every rule to the letter of the law.
Last week a glass bottle was shattered at the small pool on the other side of the complex. Glass is against the rules. Someone broke the rules. Now the management was enforcing rules, shoving them down our throats.
The man circles under the life guard chair like a hungry shark. The guard is 10 feet in the air, staring down at the pool through mirrored sunglasses that reveal no thought, no emotion, no concern. The guard’s whistle is poised and ready to be activated at a moment’s infraction.
The father gets out of the pool and angrily sits under an umbrella.
I have only been at the pool five minutes. At 1st I think the father is a jerk. I think he is making way too much out of a couple of whistle toots.
But I will come to learn that this father has been at this pool for much of the afternoon. He has watched the guard abuse power like a Hitler Youth. He has listened to a whistle tweet, toot, shrill, umpteen times.
I normally don’t feel uncomfortable at the community pool.
Today the air is thick with tension.
I look at the other guards. They seem like normal kids.
I look at the Guard Gestapo. He is poised, at the ready.
Surely this latest admonishment from an adult will curtail his happy-go-lucky whistle tooting I think.
Nope.
Whistle.
“No running, Please.”
I hear other adults from nearby lounge chairs grumble.
“Come on kid. Lighten up. The kid wasn’t even running.”
The robotic guard stands firm, drunk on power.
Whistle.
Walk.
He is a machine, a conveyor belt of regulations, being disseminated without concern or remorse.
Whistle.
“No running,” he hollers across the pool.
I scan the pool deck.
Nobody is moving, except a toddler, perhaps 18 months old.
The child is wearing an inflatable vest and big diaper swim suit.
The child appears to have just learned to be ambulatory. His balance is not good and he appears to have shifted his momentum to his shoulders causing his top to accelerate toward the ground. To compensate for gravity, the toddler speeds up his walk to catch his torso to his teetering shoulders. It is all very human, very natural.
The good news? The toddler regains his balance and doesn’t skin a knee.
The bad news? He was moving at a speed the Guard Gestapo felt was too dangerous.
Whistle.
Walk please.
Now I’m pissed. Whistling a toddler who is fighting with inertia, the laws of physics, and the Earth’s gravity? Well that’s just un-American.
I hear other parents grumble louder.
One muscle man near me, with at least a 12 pack of beer cans beside his chaise lounge looks at me and laughs out loud.
“This kid’s drunk on power,” he says over the whine of another Katy Perry song.
The anger at the pool is festering. Adults use to a whistle free existence are now on edge.
Whistle.
“Walk.”
Every tweet, every toot, every shrill blast of the guard’s whistle has become a rash on the skin of this Saturday afternoon.
Teenagers playing ball mock the guard.
“We are prancing slowly toward the edge of the pool,” they say with sly smiles as they clutch a ball and toss it to one another.
The guard Gestapo doesn’t flinch. He is poised, standing at attention, his red floatation device wrapped across his chest tucked under his arms.
I can see the pool flicker in the reflection of his glasses.
From my vantage point, I see a kid, a boy, someone who may not even have his learner’s permit.
But behind those mirrored lens, I see a cool, calculating, possibly angry youth. I wonder what it takes to stand over a pool of residents and blow the whistle over and over and over.
What kind of robotic, singular purpose of will does it take to look at a 5-year-old, moving slightly more than a skip and bellow “walk” across an other wise placid pool.
What must this expressionless boy think when a group of adults swim below him, like snapping sharks, trying to affect him, dissuade him, overtly change his perception of right and wrong.
I look at the boy in the red shorts and white t-shirt.
I imagine the chemical components that make up his brain. I wonder who this guard will become when he grows up.
Will he be a great leader of men, unafraid to do the unpopular thing. Will he wear a black trench coat and go into a crowded school and open fire on anyone in his way?
The two conflicting thoughts surge through my brain as the Guard Gestapo disregards all external influence and monitors the pool deck for violations, however imperceptible.
Whistle.
Tweet.
“slow down”
I see the man in the red hat near the umbrella curse under his lip.
Whistle.
Tweet.
“stop running.”
I see a 4th grade boy with his bathing suit pulled high, reduce his speed to a crawl.
Is the pool safer?
The whistle has created a bastion of anger that is festering in the 90 degree mid day sun.
It is being fueled by auditory punches in the skull. It is being ignited by alcohol and heat. Perhaps most of all, it is new, it is different, it is restrictive in a place where rules shouldn’t exist so forcefully.
The guard finally comes off the stand during a break.
He is expressionless and without emotion as he moves slowly past the deck chairs of adults who have been chastising him.
I hear grumbling from the men near me. There is a feeling brewing, as if this kid is a terrorist on an airliner and it’s post 911. We might have been lambs before September 11th, but not now. I hear the murmurs, I hear the words. It’s as if the group is planning to revolt, to rise to get up and take down the Guard Gestapo, tieing him to a guard chair with plastic wrist restraints till the pool manager can land the plane.
Suddenly the circling shark is at the guard station. He is talking to a woman who I will later learn is the pool manager.
I don’t hear every word over Katie Perry’s sing song sick lyrics but I do hear “Yes, I want to file a formal protest. This is ridiculous.”
I don’t know who I feel more sorry for. The angry man in the red hat or the expressionless killer with the whistle in his mouth.
The man shark only wanted to enjoy his Saturday at the pool after a long sweaty battle with his yard. And now he is waging war against a 16-year-old boy, a future leader, a future killer.
“what do you think?” the manager will ask me, taking an informal pole.
“I’ve lived here since 1999,” I say. “nobody has ever blown their whistle this much.”
“We’re instructing them to enforce the rules,” she counters.
“Mam, no disrespect, but he blew his whistle more today, in one day, than all the guards in 15 years have ever blown their whistles. I understand safety, but the worst thing that has ever happened here is a leaky diaper.”
She looks at me with a frazzled look. She wants to support her intrepid, robotic, mindless, calculating pool guard, but she also has to listen to me and the other dads. We pay our dues, we pay her bills, we are her customers.
The guard Gestapo will spend the remainder of the afternoon in Life Guard Time out. He puts in ear phones and stares into the oblivion of his future.
I watch him. He never breaks a smile, he never seems upset. He is a robot, without passion or concern.
As I walk by him to exit the pool. I feel uncomfortable. I never feel uncomfortable. I do today as I leave.
I don’t want to look at him, make eye contact with him.
He feels like a predator, like something different from normal.
You don’t look into the eyes of the angry bear or it attacks, they say.
I walk by the guard. His whistle is around his neck, quiet for the first time all day.
It’s as if he has been neutered. It’s as if the dark side of his personality has been challenged.
I am happy to hear the gate close behind me.
No more whistles. No more tension. No more Guard Gestapo.
Life’s Crazy™