You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Sitting next to the loud-speaker at the community pool.
As I walk in to the crowded venue, I scan the periphery for a place to sit.
My gaze dances across the pool deck.
Fat and white and blobs of cellulite and pool and life guard towers and then…
Bam.
A lounge chair, in the corner, all by its lonesome.
“Yes!”
I walk quickly to the rare commodity and throw my towel down.
I adjust the back rest to a perfect 45 degree angle.
I snuggle in and pop open a sports illustrated.
That’s when someone turns up the volume.
“And that’s the latest from Country Music Superstar Blake Shelton,” the voice booms from behind me.
I sit up nervously. “WTF?”
I look behind me and I see the pool speaker. It’s about as big as a shoe box and someone is cranking the radio.
Suddenly the chirp of birds is replaced with slide guitar. What was the sound of Marco Polo being uttered in the distance is now a booming drum beat.
All sound is eclipsed. The radio is blaring like a fire engine. I think about getting up, but I’m comfortable.
I like country, but not so loud that it hurts.
This almost hurts.
It is the only sound in my head.
It’s like a blanket on my brain, snuffing out all other sound.
I decide I will wait it out. Surely they will turn this down, right?
My head is full of twang. My ears are reverberating like angry wasps are doing a line dance on my cerebellum.
I listen to the booming lyrics. A girl is wearing tight blue jeans and somewhere in a farm field a tailgate on a pick up truck is down.
I lower my magazine and I stare at the scene before me. It’s a brilliant day full of aquatic endeavors.
I scan the pool deck. I see fat white people, poor dietary choices and unforgiving bathing suits. I see flab bouncing, sking jiggling, extra rolls pushing themself over the side of tight waist bands.
All this fat. All this white, sunburned epidermis, set to a twangy beat.
“She’s riding in the middle of his pick up truck, blaring Charlie Daniels…”
I watch little kids running across the pool deck, leaping forward, crossing their legs and then…
CANNON BALL!
I see the splash, I wait for giggle, but all I hear is something about “ladies love country boys” and some slide guitar.
I see the little faces push to the surface, bubbles blowing. I see the smile and the strident push of the wet hair out of the eyes. I know it was a well received splash even though I can’t hear it.
Pool in my eyes. Country in my brain. The song is all around me, filling my senses, a juxtaposition of imagery.
It’s like chewing hamburger and tasting Pizza.
It’s like putting on a tux and going surfing.
It’s like getting married in prison to a guy named Julio.
“Pass the soap please.”
It just feels odd.
I hear a song about loneliness and emptiness and a tatoo on her dierriere.
I watch a woman so pregnant, it should be documented by Ripley’s Believe it or not.
She is wearing a bikini and sporting not a single ounce of care about how big, how low, how extended, how pregnant she appears to be.
As Montgomery Gentry shouts out Hell Yeah.
I wonder if anyone knows how to deliver a small bear cub from this woman should she suddenly go into labor.
The woman waddles forward. A water bottle one hand, a cellphone in the other. She looks so uncomfortable swaying side to side like a bouncy house at a bar mitzvah.
I’m watching the most pregnant bikini every and the soundtrack to her misery is something between hayseed and Jack Daniels.
The musical accompaniment to this pool day recreation is an oddity. It’s a soccer hooligans applying for a library card.
The music assaults my ears. It jams my senses. The lyrics are predictable; blue jeans, drinking beers and juke boxes.
Is that Florida Georgia line, is that Luke Bryan?
So much country sounds like so much of everything else.
While new country is more rocking, the voices are consistently the same smothered with countrified steak.
The pool looks cool, soothing, sun rippling off the water. I am looking at a vision that feels more like Katie Perry or the Beach Boys.
Somehow the imagery is wrong. It’s tin foil in the microwave, it’s a luffa on your sunburned back, it’s a brain full of country music and a vision full of pregnant bikini.
YIKES
The sound in my head screams swimming hole and rope swing, not life guard towers and unpleasant tramp stamps.
Good times and cheap wine. Country girls and America.
My head is the national anthem of corn bread and sweet tea.
I think about getting up. The music seems louder, the imagery more insane.
Cornbread, biscuits, George Jones. American moms, corpulent sunburned chest hair, saggy boobs, bathing suit selections on a steaming hot Sunday
I wonder who chooses the music? Does anyone get to vote?
And who comes to the pool looking like this?
Fat and saggy white people with spare tire stomachs and tramp stamps of Harley Davidson sneaking above the crack in their ass.
I pack up my bag, and grab my towel.
As I move away from the speaker, I hear the distant shrill of a child doing a cannon ball.
“Marco?”
He waits.
“Polo,” comes the reply.
My senses are restored as the pool gate shuts behind me.
Life’s Crazy™