Because the weather sucks so back all over the country…
I thought I would remind you that what’s cold will be hot again, very soon
happy saturday
You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Sweating non stop and calling that a holiday.
As I write this, I am in my back yard. It is mid day. The sun is high in the sky. The solar flares are angry. The sun’s brilliant rays strong and slapping me in the epidermis with a sledgehammer of heat.
Sweat is dripping down my forehead and over my eye lids. It’s like I’m swimming in a pool of my own perspiration.
It’s 95 degrees out. the humidity is a soggy blanket of disgust.
Occasionally there is some breeze. Sadly the air is hot as if pushed through a clothes dryer.
I am sitting in the sun, punishing myself, allowing the anger to penetrate my inner core. I am a volcano of dyspeptic angst.
What am I angry at?
The Sun?
No, the sun is not the enemy here. The sun is my friend, the giver of life.
Am I angry at the heat?
No. It’s summer. Heat is suppose to be here.
No my intense consternation is reserved for the community pool which has become a shoe box of sweaty stink families.
I just left my community pool which I now officially hate.
I got there at 11:30 for the annual Memorial day celebration. 11:30am? That’s like showing up for the superbowl in June.
For some reason the pool is a harder ticket to come by than the Jimi Hendrix reunion tour and Jimi Hendrix is still dead.
The parking lot is crammed. It is more congested than 13 eggs in a carton. People are parked on the grass, and the fire lanes and in handicap spots. I know that bastard ain’t handicapped, and yet there is his car.
Families are descending on the front gate like a biblical plague descending on agent Egypt.
I enter the pool area to the pulsing sound of the chicken song. Kids are dancing and clapping and making strange hand gestures. It’s like a night club for the mentally ill complete with clucking.
The pool deck is a scorching, searing menagerie of families who have seemingly camped out over night to get a wrist band, that entitles them to first entry. They are the gate keepers of the holiday and will ultimately dictate who gets and who does not get a chair.
Chairs are the new gold.
This is the same sad sack of humanity who camp out in front of Best Buy at Xmas time to get Call of duty 47.
Oh hold on, they just broke into YMCA by the Village People. Nothing says this party is gonna rock like the Village people.
I scan the pool deck for a chair. What a joke. It’s like looking for a bikini model in Saudi Arabia.
All the lounge chairs are spoken for. All the regular chairs are occupied. There is not a single place for a grown ass man to sit.
Now I’m pissed. I pay my dues like all these bags of flesh. So why does a family of 5 with 3 kids get 5 chairs. 3 of those chairs will never be used. Kids don’t use chairs. They constantly swim. And when it’s break they sit on the side of the pool tempting fate. I stare angrily at three chairs that do nothing but act as a clothes hanger for 3 towels.
I sit on the cement. It is 300 degrees. Now I know what a baked chicken feels like when you put its sorry ass into the oven.
My thighs begin to broil. I stare at two women nearest to me. They are staring at me like I am some kind of freak. Like I am crazy, because I might want to sit at my own pool, in a chair, a chair that my dues paid for.
I feel like asking the women if the 3 empty chairs next to them are being used for anything other than a clothes hanger.
I mind my manners which are quickly being baked out of me by the cement oven.
“Screw this,” I say loud enough to be offensive to someone.
I stand up and throw my towel down in disgust. It’s right in the middle of their circle of lounge chairs. I don’t care. I have staked my claim to this spot. I have become my own disenchanted island. I am an oasis of me surrounded by pitiful overweight denizens of hell.
I get up and angrily jump in the pool. I narrowly miss soda cans that have been distributed by the sorry ass DJ for the soda toss game.
I hate the soda toss game. Someone is going to lose an eye on a Mr. Pib.
But my thighs are happy now, cooling down.
Not for long. Suddenly the sides of the pool are over run by children. It’s like a Pink Floyd video gone crazy.
Big headed children with wandering eyes and bad hair cuts are all around. The funky chicken music stops and the kids all jump into the pool.
It’s a tidal wave of crazy. Screaming and foam and I’m sure urine filled bathing suits exploding upon contact.
Kids begin karate chopping each other in the throat for a Fanta.
I am suddenly in an aquatic version of Vietnam. I put my hands up to shield my face from flying hands and aluminum cans being tossed everywhere.
I see another couple about my age. They too are caught in the middle of this Memorial Day phalanx.
The man is as pissed as I am. He either has a skin growth that needs to be looked at, or I’d say he has a bloody scratch on the side of his head. No doubt this is another pool related injury, caused no doubt, from a hooligans sharp toe nail.
“Happy Memorial Day,” I say with a scowl.
“Yeah.” He says angrily, blotting the blood dripping down his skull.
I use to have kids at this thing. I don’t remember being so angry.
You know why? because I always had a damn chair to sit in.
Now it’s as crowded as cock roach motel in a Puerto Rican rice basket.
In the course of ten minutes I’ve been microwaved by piping hot asphalt and assaulted by a myriad of 10-year-old airborne rangers.
The life guards whistle pierces the stagnant funk. Thankfully it is break.
All the hooligans exit the pool and the adults get in.
OK. Thanks God. A momentary respite I think to myself.
Suddenly a father grabs a football beside me and begins throwing from the pool to a horde of kids standing precariously on the edge of the pool.
The first pass hits 7 hands and drops right beside me. I stare at it as noodles and feet try and draw it back to the pool deck.
It floats beyond the reach of the mongrels.
I stare at them as they urge me to get the football.
I fantasize about throwing it into the parking lot and screaming “Go get that you Lilliputian sons of bitches.”
I think better of it and toss it to the adult. I let him know with a strong 3rd grade teacher stare that I expect some respect.
“Thanks,” the young dad says.
He immediately fires a bullet to the right of my head that I can only hope will be caught.
WTF dude? It ain’t like Jerry Rice is back here sun bathing.
And so it goes. Throw after ridiculous throw.
Now I want to kick young dad’s ass too. Not the relaxing pool day I was hoping for.
I get out of the pool and see an old neighbor.
“It’s turned into a South of the Border bus station,” he jokes.
I head back to my oasis of broiling concrete. There is no where to sit. So I stand. I feel the eyes of the mothers who control the empty chairs covered with towels. They want me to leave their space, but I am going to stand and air dry like a scene out of Jerry McGuire.
I pick up my iphone and begin checking text messages. I sort through my email and delete spam.
I am dry and sweating again. A child walks beside me and eye balls me with disdain.
“What’s up kid?” I say.
He looks at me like I’m a problem that needs fixing.
He goes back to one of the mothers.
“Yeah, don’t talk to strangers,” I say so the mothers can hear me.
I throw my towel into my back pack and put on my sandals.
I am going to the sauna that is my back yard. It has all the amenities of a pool without the pool and all the perspiration of a Shaquille O’Neill sweat towel.
Who needs a pool when you have a wet wash cloth right?
And the chicken song will never play in my back yard.
So bring on the sun. Light my fire Mr. Sol.
As long as no kid in a diaper starts urinating in my back yard.
I’m cool.
Long live me. And Screw the neighborhood pool.
And that is crazy™