Green Alert

“Why’s the pool so crowded?” PP asks Burly Nice Lifeguard as she stares at the pandemonium of circle swimmers. She was so sick of the crowds! The pool had been an odious, wretched, heinous, hellish, claustrophobic, menacing Mayhem all week!

BNF shakes his head and sighs. “Actually the pool’s been closed for the last 24 hours.”
“Really? But I was here yesterday.”
”Yeah, well it just reopened.”
“Why was it closed?’
“A little kid had an accident.”
“Oh….” A Brown Alert, PP thinks. She didn’t make this up. Some smart ass at another pool, she thinks the one in Encinitas perhaps, quipped it.

Well, she’d asked. And she’d gotten her answer. So this is why the pool was so crowded this evening as she climbed into a lane and began the sinister circle swimming. Ugh. Then the two swimmers got out.

Yahoo! She had her own lane! But not for long, cause here come Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Two pasty white guys with Easter egg caps (PP thinks it’s kinda weird when guys were caps anyway. Why this is she hasn’t really analyzed and doesn’t feel like doing so now, but there it is.) So, TD and TD’s caps were purple and green respectively, their dorky white guy ears protruding outside the bright colored caps.







Oh, my. They were from hell. PP was in a Splash Sandwich with one on either side of her, making waves that nearly drowned her. Nevertheless, she got through her swim with only a minimum of water swallowed.

Exhausted, she thankfully, plops into the Hot Tub afterwards where DL joins her followed by another swimmer, a round, middle-aged, Pasty Pink Woman with many sighs of “Ahhh….this feels so good!”

PP tells DL of the Brown Alert (Gross! I didn’t need to know that!) And of the Splash Sandwich construction of TD and TD. DL cracks up just like she’s supposed to when PP tells her stories. PPW smiles over at them, nodding in agreement about the splashing and then goes into a harangue about the damage the chlorine does on the hair and skin.

DL is staring at PPW, but trying not to. PP can tell. Yet, It can’t be ignored, though DL is trying to. But not very hard.

Why is she staring?

PP can’t mention it at the time, but PPW has a giant snot line hanging under her nose. PP feels a little nauseous writing this down. But there it is. It's one of the hazards of swimming. Yet why doesn't she notice it and wipe it off? This makes her more than a little suspect.

“….and so I always take time off between swims because of the chlorine,” PPW announces.
“Yeah, that’s a good strategy,” PP agrees, trying not to stare at her nose.
“Do you?” she asks.
“Nah, I need to swim all the time. It’s good for my Brain.”
PPW stares at her for a moment, perplexed, before nodding, “Yeah, I can see that. It gets Oxygen to your brain.”
PP nods. This isn’t what she meant, but clarifying her psychological inferences to PPW seemed too arduous a task what with the distraction under her nose and all.
“Well, you two have a good evening,” PPW signs off, lumbering out of the tub and into the showers.


As soon as she disappears behind the wall of showers, DL busts up. “Did you see that?’
Giggling, PP nods. DL doesn’t have to identify it. But she does, in her own poetic fashion.
“She had a Green Alert!”






They both crack up! “It’s like I’m 6 years old,” DL gasps between giggles.

And it’s true. 6 year olds know how to call it.
If only PP had had a 6 year old during her Splash Sandwich. She was sure somehow that woulda helped with TD and TD.

Or maybe not.

Lord knows, the pool definitely didn’t need any more Brown Alerts. At least when PP wanted to swim.