Trophy

“This may be completely inappropriate, but why don’t they have some sort of signage requiring that the little ones wear diapers in the pool?”
DL and P chuckle. A pronouncement has been made by the Mayor of Oakland. Even though it sounds like a suggestion.

That’s a good question,” P grins, stretching out on the top shelf of Utopia, wriggling her toes.

“I mean, they don’t know any better.” Sandy sighs loudly as she douses herself with a hefty splash of water. “I take my niece and nephew to the pool. I ask, them, ‘Do you have to use the restroom?’ No, Auntie, we don’t have to go.’ And then sure enough, my nephew lays one on.” Sandy shakes her head, “It’s like he left a Trophy in there!”

They all crack up: P and DL and the random supine woman who’d been resting, quietly heaterized till this point.
“Well, you know what I mean,” Sandy glances around at them all.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” P answers. “It’s just that that was a really funny way to describe it.”
“And while we’re at it, when my pool was closed over the holidays, I had to swim in this pool. And you remember how they had this one closed for weeks to ‘super clean’ it?”

“Yeah,” P answers—she kinda remembers this so she’s not just priming the story.
“And so when I go for a swim here and I swear it’d only been open for 3 hours….”
“Well, a hundred people had already used it by then,” P jokes.
Sandy eyes her for a moment. Frustrated? Why oh why must P always interrupt with her inane exaggerations? Yet she doesn’t say this. Instead she just answers like P was serious. “Well, I think it was not that many.”
“Well, you know what I mean,” P offers sheepishly.

“Yes, I do. I totally do. Anyway, I’m in the pool and I’m swimming down the lane and I’m grabbing big, I mean HUGE hunks of hair in my hands, not just one or two strands, mind you, but big GOBS of hair, as I’m pulling through the water.”

“EEEWWW gross!” P cries with appropriate disgust drama emphasis, but not before noting to herself that Sandy has mentioned this particularly gross pool hygiene story several times before. Hair does get in the pool. P does have to shake off a strand or two every once in awhile and while a nuisance, it's not Gobs, like she often spies in the showers. Which is another story and not one she's going to mention right now.

“And so I ask you, why don’t they require that folks wear swim caps in the pool? I mean c’mon, people.”
“They do at Hilltop,” P says.
“Really?” Sandy perks up for this.

“Yeah, I think so. I know I’ve seen a sign before you get in the pool about how long hair must be tied back or in a cap.”
“Well, see there you go.”
“And there’s a nice visual and directive about using the toilet before you get in the pool too.”
“See? And I bet they don’t have as many pool closures as they do here in Oakland, am I right? Remember how that one summer this pool was closed like every other week because some kid had taken a dump in the pool?”

“It was a Trophy Summer!” P exclaims.
Sandy chuckles, shaking her head, as DL rises and weaves out. The other woman lies completely paralyzed. The trophy conversation old hat by now.

“Okay, I’ll stop complaining now,” Sandy rises too and follows DL out.

P thinks to herself how she certainly hopes that this was just a polite proclamation, the no complaining assertion. For P, without complaining, there’d be no story. Nothing to talk about. Nothing to write about.

Why no Trophy at all without complaints.

Which would be entirely inappropriate, don’t you agree?