Summer of Nope

Dive in, the water is fine!

I'm not a big fan of public swimming pools.  Oh, I can swim, but the thought of immersing myself in the same fluid that extends to the nether regions of the crowd that regularly graces the pages of People of Walmart has no appeal to me.

Do I not like people?

I like most of them just fine, as long as they A) keep their distance or B) live in an alternate universe. Preferably B.  

But I've digressed.  Swimming pools, as I said, are not for me.  I can say much the same about the outdoors in general.  I find that my preferred environment is cooled to 72 degrees, dimly lit, and features menus and wait staff.  I mean, why bother evolving into a sentient creature in a technological civilization if you don't spend every waking moment getting as far away from that hunting and gathering nonsense as is possible?

I'm sure my primitive ancestors spent their whole lives mucking around in dangerous bodies of water.  I'm also sure they hated it, right up until the time the crocodiles ate them or the deadly snakes bit them.  So I feel I owe it to the ghosts of the elders to keep myself well-fed, comfortable, and well away from bodies of water, including swimming pools.

Too, there are customs dictating what is and is not appropriate clothing for a dip in the pool. If you're a trim 20 year old, by all means put on a bikini.

But if you are, hmm, let's see, me, do you really want to subject the water-going public to the sight of your bare torso?

Fig. 2, an artist's rendition of the Author sans shirt.

Face it, pools are bacterial stew-pots.  People bring in babies.  People bring in themselves.  Have you looked at people lately? Gross. Unless there's enough chlorine in the water to bleach my swim trunks a sudden stark white, forget it.

But pools can harbor worse things that the contents of a baby diaper.  Case in point -- this public pool in Boston held a dead human body for at least two full days.

That's right.  A woman drowned in the pool, and despite the presence of lifeguards and numerous other swimmers her bloating corpse just floated there for forty-eight gruesome, awful hours.

It's not that no one noticed.  At least one kid made a report to the laughably termed 'lifeguards,' who ignored both the report and the green limp woman floating face down in the deep end since yesterday.

I have to wonder -- just what constitutes an emergency in that particular pool?

Drowning obviously isn't it.  Dead bodies clouding up the water with the by-products of decay?  Nah, no biggie.

Splashing, though -- I bet splashing gets you a whistle, and two splashing incidents rates a ban.

The story gets even funnier, aside of course from the 'corpse' part.  The pool was visited by inspectors once during the dead woman's marathon motionless float.  

The inspectors did note a 'cloudiness' in the water.  But, since they apparently never made it past the Scotland Yard entrance exams, no one connected the cloudiness with the gas-filled cadaver making slow turns in the corner.

So yeah.  Let's all rush to the nearest public pool and exchange body fluids with strangers.  It's what summer is all about!