What Would Ronald Reagan Do?

He walks past us starring. More like glaring. We can feel his eyes beating on us through his mirrored sun glasses. He’s waiting for us to do something, anything, wrong so that he can swoop in and implement severe punishment. I’m pretty sure the cold war is over but someone forgot to tell Ivan Drago, I mean, the head life guard at my pool – Darko. Yes, like Cher and Madonna, Darko only needs one name. He’s that bad ass. Heavy on the ass part.

It’s kind of a sad story because apparently the company that manages our lifeguards treats them rather shabbily; paying them little and always threatening to deport them (they’re mostly Eastern Europeans). Normally, something like that would enrage me and I’d be all over helping these poor mistreated foreigners but unfortunately Darko has ruined that for everyone.
He’s just awful. Instead of working with the neighbors to help make the pool a safe and fun environment, he attacks us. I guess the little power he has as head life guard makes him feel like a man or something. So he walks around the pool deck like a traffic cop stalking a parking garage, stopping to tell kids what they can’t do (no water guns, no balls, no laughter, no smiling), take pacifiers from babies (yes, he actually told Charlie that his pacifier is illegal on pool grounds), stop parents from taking pictures (apparently some cameras are not allowed) and ask swim teachers what gives them the right to teach kids in this pool to swim. Are you kidding me? As a life guard wouldn’t it be in your best interest to be watching kids who can actually swim? Sounds like something that would make the job a lot easier. Of course, this would mean you would actually have to be doing the part of the job that involves making sure people don’t get hurt or drowned. That part of the job is not so important to Darko. When my son fell and bled all over the pool deck, Darko didn’t look our way, let alone offer a first aid kit. And when my friend’s daughter fell into the pool, her mother ran in to save her – the lifeguards didn’t even acknowledge it had happened. Now if that little girl had been drowning and holding a water gun, they would have noticed long enough to peel the gun out of her flailing hands. Saving her, maybe not so important.

And on top of everything else, Darko does not seem to agree that cleanliness is close to Godliness. I grew up with a pool in my backyard and it was my job to clean it so I actually have about as much pool cleaning experience as Morris Buttermaker. And unlike Darko or Buttermaker, I cleaned the skimmers for a pool in the woods so I regularly had to remove floating dead forest rodents from it. Cleaning a pool in Davidsontucky is serious business.

Anyhow, now that we have my qualifications in regards to judging pool cleanliness cleared up; let’s get to the problem at hand. First of all, you have to clean the skimmers every night and every morning. Otherwise they fill up with gross stuff that just stays there. And then when the pool water level runs a little low, the gross stuff in the skimmer floats back out into the pool. So if you’re not emptying it out a couple times a day, why even have one? I know that the skimmers at my pool are not being cleaned because last week I checked them myself every day and for four days in a row the same cloth starfish toy was in there. As the days went on, the starfish never moved but just got more and more covered in beetles. Gross.

And then last Friday when the water was a little low, I noticed toys and beetles being sucked in and then spit out of the skimmer. A few minutes after that I noticed some sort of chunky substance that looked to be regurgitated food floating in the water. I thought it was throw up so my first urge was to scream “Throw up in the pool!” but I didn’t want to send the whole pool into a widespread panic like Spaulding did when he saw the Baby Ruth that looked like poo, so instead I just grabbed my son and his two pals and moved them away from the vomit. Then my friend went and told the lifeguards about it. They inspected the substance and said it was peanut butter and then casually tried to remove it. How did the supposed peanut butter get there? How long had it been there? Why didn’t Darko notice it during one of his starring jaunts? Would he have stopped the peanut butter if it had been shooting a water gun? Who knows? All I know is that two of Charlie’s pals ended up with some intestinal problems over the weekend and Charlie ended up at the doctor’s office with an oozing infected cut today. The doctor seemed to think the “incident” at the pool could be to blame. And that made me want to go all Rocky IV growing a savage beard and carrying a log up a snowy mountain to kick your ass, Drago, I mean Darko!

So what next? Do I continue to go to a pool where I feel like I’m part of the Genesis “Land of Confusion” video? Do I wait for Darko to piss off someone else a t the pool and then gather up an army of neighbors and shout “Wolverines!”? Do I climb up on a lifeguard stand and let the Russkies know that if “I can change and you can change then we all can change?” and end the cold war forever? Naturally, I keep asking myself what would Ronald Reagan do? Not surprisingly, my favorite president and the man who ended the first cold war was also a lifeguard. Sure wish The Gipper was here to help me end this one.