Poop in the Pool, Everybody Out!

Memoirs of a Lifeguard

As the glories of June dilate all around us, and the first whiff of chlorine drying on hot pavement hits the nostrils, I time travel back to the greatest job I ever had: lifeguarding in the public pools of Worcester.

This week I recommend: summer jobs, lifeguarding specifically, and Worcester in the 1990s generally.

Or better yet: becoming the thing you yearn to be.

As a high school student, I associated lifeguarding with a certain effortless glamour, a sunkissed Californian athleticism that, for me, was not inborn but perhaps, I thought, I could emulate. Emulating, turns out, is often synonymous for doing. And the late 90s/early aughts were a time of emulating: buying your breezy SoCal attitude at Hollister and tuning into The OC and Desperate Housewives. I realized I could take the lifeguarding class at the JCC, take the test, and, a lifeguard is born. This is a life lesson I’m grateful to have internalized early on because it shows up over and over again.

When I taught a seminar on true crime this spring, I had the undergrad students do reporting (i.e. pick up the phone and call strangers and ask them questions). Designing a course this way did prompt the question of whether I hate myself (often). I didn’t expect them to become the next Truman Capote or to even do a good job necessarily. What I wanted them to learn was that there’s nothing innate to doing this kind of work, or any credential conferred. You just start, and boom, you’re a true crime reporter.

And boom, I was a lifeguard. The thing about becoming a lifeguard in Worcester though, and not, say, Newport Beach, is that you are a lifeguard in Worcester. The public pools were three feet three inches at their most profound, and in the mornings upon opening the facility (at 11:30 a.m., no better start time for a teenager), we would often have to chase junkies out of the bathroom. The bathrooms, by the way, were straight out of prison: stainless steel, lacking doors, toilet paper, soap, or mirror.

It is a curious thing to grant a tiny fiefdom to people whose prefrontal cortices have yet to fully develop. As head lifeguard of Beaver Brook, I, at 18 years old, was responsible for the health and safety of our patrons (most of whom were under 18 and stayed from open til close, but a tight ship I did run), scheduling staff, and closing the facility due to inclement weather, or, the more likely scenario, poop on the pool.

A fecal specimen floating (or sinking) in the pool was a dream come true because you were required by (Worcester?) law to close for 24 hours while the water was shocked with chemicals. Most lowly regular lifeguards would be sent home save the head guard (moi) and a guard of her choosing. I always chose a person I shall call Bridget (to protect her guilt), my then-assistant, and the future godmother of my future children. This Bridget showed so much promise in the Worcester Aquatics Program that she was eventually promoted to AQUATICS DIRECTOR after a tour at University Pool in Crystal Park aka Dead Hooker Park (local parlance, no joke), a site so dreaded that older male guards with fraternity brands quit after a mere few days on the job. Neighborhood children once lit the guard shack aflame with an improvised Molotov cocktail. Come closing time, they would lie under Bridget’s car tires so she could not leave.

Longtime LOR readers know I am prone to hyperbole. None of this is an exaggeration.

Anyway, back to the poop in the pool.

Turds would show up in the pool organically, so often that it would not raise an eyebrow to call it in to the big bosses, who would tell us to follow protocol: scoop the poop, clear the pool, shut it down. Hang in the guard shack, watch your Sex and the City DVDs, endure the ad hominem attacks of local children shouting “lazy lifeguards.” Truer words.

But once, the turds got some nudging along. Enter Shady Fish.

Shady Fish was not his given name, but the only name he would answer to. Now, with the backward glance and being several decades removed, I realize Shady Fish did not exist solely to bother me and swim in three feet of piss water seven hours a day but more likely came from a very untenable domestic situation. But bother me he did. He would ride his BMX bike into the pool, beat on his half dozen half siblings, and invent all manner of epithet against me, including saying that I “look like I got fucked by a skunk.”

Shady Fish became an ally the day we paid him twenty U.S. dollars to take a shit in the pool. I wish I could report that I battled my conscience over such a ploy, that we had to persuade him, etc, but no. Money exchanged hands, he took to a quiet corner to do his work, and we feigned surprise and disgust when the objet d’poissoin was discovered moments later.

This was the beginning of a life of crime, one that would culminate in writing a newsletter with a subscription model to charge strangers to read such filth.

I look at my two boys growing up in brownstone Brooklyn, the promise of bucolic summer camps and family vacations before them and feel disgust. I vow to send them to Worcester every summer to get toughened up, to know the Shady Fishes of the world, to be not coddled urbane dandies. To know the pleasure of crafting your income and your escape simultaneously, of shouting across a baking concrete deck, POOP IN THE POOL, EVERYBODY OUT!

Two criminals in an embrace that has yet to release.

Might I also recommend:

This is the energy I want my kids to know.

A Doll’s House on Broadway: Chastain and Moayed are incredible but a hard ANTI-REC to the boomers in the audience who did not heed the ushers’ admonishment to shut off their phones ALL THE WAY. No joke, I could feel vibrations of silenced ringers throughout the show, heard at least two incoming calls, and a man’s alarm went off in the row behind me, from which I almost fainted. Come collect your aunties!!!

Also…Aladdin on Broadway! I am not a Disney adult, in fact, I quite loathe most things Disney (Scary!!! Too many dead parents!) But wow do those villains know what they are doing. Aladdin is nothing short of an orientalist SPECTACULAR, replete with fireworks and tap dancing. At first, I found myself looking askance at grownups sans children for the 2pm matinee but might be me next time.

My Last Innocent Year: devoured.

This profile of Tom Hanks by Chris Heath: I am more recommending Heath>Hanks. I met the legend at a party and really embarrassed myself.

The new Amy Schumer special has some moments, particularly a riff on Hilaria Baldwin.

Bathrobe time: time in my bathrobe

Green chair time: time in my green chair

If I can do them both simultaneously, that’s living.

What are you recommending these days?

ALSO! Do you have any questions about writing?! If so, please send me your queries and I can attempt to lamely answer in a subsequent installment!