There’s a First Time for Everything

Dear Friends, I have been hoping to create more writing than in the past for this blog because I really enjoy writing for it. So that is what I hope to do in the coming months.

If you like reading my blog, I encourage you to subscribe. If you do not see a subscribe box, click on this link then look at the white box on the right-hand side. As always, I appreciate your support! Now on to today’s topic.

Sometimes my husband acts in sort of an editorial role when it comes to my blog. He is a big fan and reads it diligently each time. He also gives me kind but useful feedback when it comes to my writing. I don’t mind. I like it a lot because I often need direction. It is hard to always know where to go or what to try next. Recently, he gave me a writing prompt. He said, “I challenge you to tell a story in your next post.”

I didn’t know immediately what to write about, but I trusted that I could put the task in the back of my mind and the story idea would come to me when I was least expecting it. Just as predicted, my brain delivered not two hours later.

This is a story I have never told anyone, not even my husband. When I remembered, it made me laugh a little, even though it is kind of gross. I hope that you will think it is kind of funny too.

Here is my disclaimer: This is a bit of a gross story so if you don’t think that you will like that, I encourage you to stop reading now. I won’t be offended.

Last week, I celebrated a week of many firsts. Not only did I turn 40, but I also completed some training milestones in my quest to run a half-marathon. For instance, on Saturday for the first time in my life, I ran for 60 minutes without stopping. I also celebrated the fact that on that very run I ran 5 miles without stopping for the first time ever. It was, as Borat would say, “Great Success!”

Last Thursday, July 25th, also marked the day that I achieved particular first when I visited my local YMCA swimming pool.

Here is the story:

On Thursday, I arrived at the YMCA to take I my older son, Mr. Man to his Tumble Tigers gymnastics class. It’s a class for high energy boys between the ages of 3-5. Mr. Man loves it. I love it too. It last for an entire hour. They never cut it short. He gets to go with it without me and though I usually stick around the watch to first few minutes and I return to the hallway outside of the gymnasium to pick him up a few minutes before it is over, the instructor requires nothing of me. I don’t need to intervene if it is not going well. They handle the whole thing. He loves it and I love the time I have to myself while he is there. Also it helps him burn off some energy. So all and all, it is a win-win.

I consider the time when he is in class to be “me time”. On more ambitious days, I use the treadmill while Mr. Man is in class. On days when I just need a break, I drop Baby Nugget off in the babysitting area and I visit the sauna then zone out on my phone while I cool down on the bleachers outside of the sauna, overlooking the pool.

On that particular Thursday, I dropped Baby Nugget off and decided to go take a short swim during my break.

It was a nice treat to swim by myself. Though I do a lot of swimming with the boys, I don’t usually swim by myself much these days. I calculated that I had a little over a half hour to swim because I was running a little behind and I needed time to change before and after the swim.

The pool is indoors and is shown in the picture above. The attendance that day seemed above average for a Thursday in the summer at twelve noon. There were more families swimming in the shallow section than would be there during the school year. Numbering between three and five, including myself, the count of swimmers in the lap section of the pool seemed normal for that day of the week. Besides myself, the swimmers were mostly senior citizens.

While I was dropping Mr. Man off at Tumble Tigers, I had passed one of my friends who was leaving the YMCA pool for the day with her son and she had told me that the pool had been much more active than what they were used to normally because some of the day-camp kids had their swim time while she was there. This fact is important because of what I am going to tell you later. This is to say that lots of people had used the pool already that day.

I did notice that pool seemed livelier than normal when I arrived. The camp kids where long gone by the time I entered the pool but it was noticeably less quiet than it was during the school year.

I took notice of the time on the large digital pool clock, grabbed a paddle board from the supply cupboard, and jumped in. And this this is when I noticed the first sign of trouble.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until the very end of my time swimming time.

The truth is that a few minutes after I began my swim that day, I noticed one, small brown granule floating in the water. It wasn’t touching me but it was probably less than one foot away. It was in my field of vision but I can’t remember where my body was in relation to it.

I wasn’t immediately alarmed but I did notice it with curiosity. When I looked closely at it I noticed that it was beginning to fleck apart a little. As a Geoenvironmental studies major in college, I mentally compared the granule to the geological definition of a piece of gravel. Which is to say that it was probably 2-4 mm in diameter and was the size of a very small stone in a driveway. I was not immediately alarmed but it certainly registered with me.

I decided to put this sighting out of my mind and pretend like I had never seen it. I reasoned that I only had half an hour after all and this was my “me time”. I decided that it probably wasn’t what I thought it was. I thought that I wouldn’t want the lifeguards to clear everyone out of the pool on account of me seeing something that I wasn’t sure I was seeing. So I swam on.

I counted my laps. I relished my freedom. I reminded myself how lucky I was to belong to the YMCA. I put the small brown granule out of mind because it probably wasn’t what I thought it was.

However, there came a point when I could no longer deny what I thought I saw. About fifteen minutes into my swim, I noticed two larger brown lumps moving around on the bottom of the pool. They were about half way down the lap lane lengthwise. If they were what I suspected they were, I surmised that they had probably drifted over from the family side of the pool as the lap lanes are connected to the family pool area.

I wasn’t 100 percent sure that I that I knew what I was seeing Yet, I was pretty sure.

But again, I wan’t totally sure. And I liked my freedom and despite what I was thought I saw, I enjoyed the serenity that I was feeling in the pool.

Though I do feel some disdain for myself now as I write this, at the time, I to made the decision to swim for a few more minutes before I decided to tell the lifeguard. Truthfully, I wasn’t too grossed for most of that swim time. In fact, when I wasn’t anywhere near them, I almost forgot about seeing them. I only got really grossed out while I swam over them. To clarify, they was several feet below me, as I was on the surface and they on the bottom of the pool.

Finally though, the disgust that I was pushing back in my brain could no longer be denied. I had to tell the lifeguards.

That day, July 25th, the day after my 40th birthday, became the first time in my life that I was the person who spotted the poop in the pool. For the first time in my life, I was the Poop Spotter.

I don’t know about you, but when I am at a pool, and the whistles are blown and everyone is told to leave the pool, I look for the brown culprit in the pool. I don’t know if I have ever seen it before. I know for a fact that I have never been the one to report it before.

I knew that I might be ruining someone’s pool outing by reporting what I saw. Such is the burden of a person in my situation. But when I got out of the pool and told the two young, male, high-school looking lifeguards, I suspected that they thought that I wrong about what I saw. A little bit of me also thought that I saw a look of accusation on their faces, like they thought that I did it.

It made me smile a little to think that they might have thought that I did it.

I stuck around long enough to see one of the lifeguards take a long handled skimmer out of their cleaning arsenal and try to get it out of the water. They seemed to be having some trouble getting it out of the water.

Then I entered the locker room without seeing what happened next. I don’t know if they evacuated the pool, but I did feel a little sorry for the people who I saw in the locker room, where I went to shower and change. There pool time might have been delayed.

Then I completely forgot about the incident because I was rushing to pick up Baby Nugget from the babysitting area which was scheduled to close just a few minutes later. I would need to go and fetch Mr. Man a few minutes after that. Then we would need to get home for lunch and naps.

When I remembered this incident, I wondered if the lifeguards, upon seeing me that next time, would think of me as the poop reporting woman. I wondered if they would doubt my innocence.

So dear husband, I am thankful for this writing assignment because I would have completely forgot about it not been for you. I enjoyed taking the time to write and edit it for clarity. So often I rush through writing my entries on this blog because I am eager to get them up. I sometimes feel that I do not write often enough so that when I finally write something, I do not take my time to weed it and care for it like a gardener and I really enjoy those aspects of writing.

I also wonder if in posting this post, you dear reader, might think that I would put my own freedom above the hygiene of other swimmers, which is I guess what I did. I might have outed myself as a selfish person.

I hope you are all well and are hopefully not too grossed out.