The Volunteer Pool Monitor

I love my job! As a volunteer pool monitor, it is my responsibility to open the pool gate in my community at 7:00 each morning. 

I walk from my home to the pool in almost total silence. It’s a meditation. The only sound is the squawking of a few crows that live high in the trees.

Two cats, one black and white, and one all black, walk separate trails. They are “neighborhood cats” not unlike the “neighborhood dogs” in Mexico. They belong to no one and yet belong to everyone. The cats look well fed. The squirrels and rabbits eye them with suspicion. 

We have almost no birds any more, in my community. That is a recent development. I don’t know where they’ve gone. I hope the cats didn’t eat them.

As I reach the big iron gate, I take a deep breath and realize how beautiful the pool is. The water is calm at this hour of the morning. Six big pots of flowers surround the L-shaped pool. Geraniums and sweet potato vines overflow their pots and beg for water. 

Again I remember my home in Mazatlan, where the fountain was often the only sound I heard, early in the morning, as I sat outside drinking a cup of coffee before the buses roared by outside. There were bright red hibiscus, instead of geraniums, but the effect was the same. I was glad to be alive.

Not every morning, has been peaceful, of course. One morning I was startled as I reached the pool, to see four very drunk young adults swimming in the pool before I was able to unlock the gate.

“Who are you? And how did you get in” I wanted to know.

“I’m Jeremy. This is my friend, Josh. He’s leaving today for the army. We thought we’d come for a swim before he has to leave,” said the lesser drunk. Two girls with long, stringy, blond hair scooted to the side of the pool.

“How did you get in?”

“We put our hand through the bars and unlocked the gate,” Jeremy lied. I realized I was never going to get a straight answer. I also realized that if people are determined to get in the pool after hours, they will find a way.

By this time, both young men were out of the pool, wanting to shake my hand and let me know that they were, in fact, very good boys. They were sorry. They didn’t want to cause any trouble. I told them to go home, and they did. 

As part of my responsibility, I water the plants twice a day. I water by hand, because I believe the plants like it that way. I fertilize them every couple of weeks. I talk to them in the morning and tell them to be good boys, and not cause any trouble. I come back at supper time and water them again.

Two weeks ago, I decided to stay at the pool for a little while after watering the flowers for the second time that day. It was a quiet, peaceful scene. An elderly couple was noodling and bobbing their way around the deep end, when a group of very loud, young Afghan-American girls arrived. Because they are Muslim, they are allowed to swim in their shorts and t-shirts, rather than in bathing suits they consider to be immodest. 

They have come to the pool before with their mother, a lovely, quiet woman full of gratitude, who eagerly told me she doesn’t know what to do with her daughters or their friends. They scream and yell. They don’t listen to her. This particular night the girls came with their grandmother, an aunt, and a much younger sister (age 6) who was the only one entrusted with the key.

The girls jumped in the water, laughing and screaming as usual. They were chasing and spraying each other with “water blasters” ~ high powered squirt guns. A couple of them sprayed my feet as I walked along the pool, watering geraniums. I ignored them.

The elderly couple called me over and remarked that they were going to leave if the girls didn’t stop screaming. That was my cue. I talked to the grandmother and the aunt. I told them I was going to ask the girls to stop screaming. They nodded their heads in agreement.

I approached the girls, who were having a great time. When I leaned over, to give the girls my message ~ “stop screaming or come out of the pool” ~ one of them hit me with the water blaster.  She soaked me, head the toe. My hair and my t-shirt were dripping wet. The girls stopped screaming when they realized what happened. Grandma started to cry. The aunt apologized.

“Get out of the pool!” I thundered. I was no longer the nice Grandma Lynda. I was the person who used to work in a high school. I was not a volunteer pool monitor. I was a campus security guard. 

I ordered the girls to sit at one of the tables, while I told them, “If you ever come back to this pool, you will not scream. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” they answered, meekly.

“Do you see anyone else screaming at this pool?” I pointed at the elderly couple bobbing in the deep end, who were obviously not screaming.

“Do you see anyone else hitting the volunteer pool monitor with a water blaster?”

“No.” they agreed. 

“Then you don’t do those things, either.”

“Ok”

And next time leave your water blasters at home”

The girls have not been back. They’ve been replaced by Japanese Beetles, attacking the geraniums and the sweet potato vines. Alas, Japanese Beetles are more of a nuisance than screaming middle school girls, and harder to get rid of.