Good Job

 

“Okay, Ladies! The pool is closed. The locker room closes in 1 minute!” The lifeguard stalks through the locker room, announcing the closure loudly. Doesn’t make eye contact with any of the half dozen or so women still half dressed.

            No one seems in a rush. Except for me. I always try to get out on time. But it’s hard. I’m so slow.

            “You can do it, Girl!” Singing Woman encourages me, grabbing the keys to her Mercedes lying on the bench. “I have a story about my husband at Costco. He tells me, every time I wanna go to Costco, ‘I don’t wanna go with you. You’re too slow.’ And this one time, I tell him, ‘I just have to return something. I won’t be long.’ So he says, ‘Okay’. And I leave him in the car while I go in, but of course, I pick up a few other things that I needed, this hairbrush, and some real cute sandals, you know? It’s hard to resist. But still, I wasn’t gone long. When I get back to the car, I ask my husband, ‘See I wasn’t gone long, was I?’ And he just shrugs and says, ‘I guess not.’ ‘You guess not! You guess not!’ I say to him. ‘You supposed to say, GOOD JOB, TRUDY! GOOD JOB!’”

            I start laughing, trying to gather all my swim gear and toss it in my gym bag before the lifeguard comes back in and starts yelling at us. And, I think, this commendation of ‘Good Job’ is so overused that it has no meaning. I remember watching the movie, Whiplash, where the hellishly abusive drum teacher, J. K. Simmons, yelled at one of his students about how being told he’d done a ‘good job’ gave students permission to be lazy and unmotivated. “Good job!” he’d yelled, terrifying the student, “The two most useless words in the English language for a teacher to use to motivate his students. You haven’t done a ‘good job’, you haven’t even done an adequate job. You are here. You sit on your ass and pound on the drums like some sort of cartoon idiot, and you expect me to say, ‘Good job.’ Well, it ain’t gonna happen buddy. Not on my watch!”

            I’m guilty of this too when teaching piano. Especially with the little kids. They just exhaust me. They don’t listen to me. When they do anything that halfway resembles music or what I’ve been trying to get them to do, say play the melody of Mary Had a Little Lamb with both the right and left hand even though you could just play it with the right hand, well, I just shrug and say, “Good Job, Jenny.” And Jenny beams. Sometimes smiling and wriggling. She’s happy with herself. I’m happy to not yell at her. Saying ‘good job’ does the trick.

            Now, in the locker room, Singing Woman laughs along with me, “You see? You can do it! I’m outta here!” She lifts her bag onto her shoulder, gives a wave to everyone, heads out of the lockeroom.

            I yell after her, “Good job, Trudy. Good job!”

            All the women in the locker room start laughing, the sound of their mirth floating up into the cold sterile walls of the room.

            I walk over to the mirror, start to yank at my wet hair to get the tangles out, thinking, if I can get most of these tangles out, it will be a good job.

            And, I don’t even have to go to Costco to get a new brush to do it.

            Good job, Cj, Good job, I say to myself, yanking the last clump free. I toss my brush into my bag and hurry out of the locker room, the echo of "LADIES! THE LOCKER ROOM IS NOW CLOSED!" following me out into the parking lot. 

The Peace Apple?

 

“Ahhh….at least it’s cooler today!” L exclaims as we spill into the parking lot of the Kennedy Pool facility, the last three women to straggle out.

            It had been too hot the last few days, especially for the middle of March. Usually, northern California has plenty of rain in March. In fact, some years it’s even been dubbed ‘Miracle March’ when the storms sweep through in an otherwise dry year, giving the snowpack and reservoirs much needed reserves.

            But not this year. This year, the rain stopped in March. Each day clear and blue and waterless. People exclaim over how beautiful the weather is. How nice it is to be out in the warmth. Yet the warmth and sunshine at this time of year portends more drought. Don’t people get this?

            I like the warmth. I’ll admit it. But I also have a healthy does of anxiety (can anxiety ever be healthy?) about the lack of rain tied to the climate crisis and potential drought. California has been in a severe drought for more years than not in my adult life. There are stats about this, but the bottom line is, no rain in March is NOT a good thing.

            Today, when L exclaims about the relieving coolness from the previous few days of blistering heat, V, loaded down with armfuls of plastic bags, shakes her head and smiles at me, sitting at the table eating my Good For You Brownie Bar snack. “I like the warm weather,” she says to me, almost conspiratorially? Or am I just imagining this? L has trundled off to her Jeep, waving goodbye to us and the conversation. I am left to respond to V’s comment? Esp since it does seem aimed at me. Almost a dare? But again, am I imagining this?

            “Yeah,” I agree now, but can’t help but mention what the heat means, “But we need the rain. You know, climate crisis and all.”

            V stops shuffling around in her trunk with all the plastic bags. Turns toward me, taking a few steps in her tottering white high healed sandals: “We have enough water,” she hisses, staring at me long and hard. Almost a threat? Daring me to contradict her? But before I can respond, she says, “It’s the price of gas that we should be worried about! I paid $5.99 a gallon this morning! Can you believe that? $5.99!!!!”

            I nod, knowing that gas is way up because of Trump’s deadly and unnecessary war with Iran. The price of oil going up and up each day: 10%, 25%, 30%. And, yes, we drivers are paying for it with the price of gas. Yet all moral outrage aside about this war, we can live without gas. Water, on the other hand, is a resource that we can’t live without. It’s a finite resource. And with the climate crisis, with longer and more severe droughts, the issue of not having enough water is a real one.

            I decide not to get into all of this, though, with V today. She seems too agitated. A bit unhinged. I’ve always thought she was a little crazy. Spending over an hour in the locker room primping: makeup, hair drying, fancy dresses and shoes. Everyone else tries to get out of the locker room as quickly as possible. It’s not a nice place after all. Cold cement floor, freezing air temperature, screaming kids.

            V has turned back to her car now and is bending over the trunk, rifling through the plastic bags. Emerging, she turns toward me, hand outstretched, something in her palm.

            “Hey, Carol, do you want an apple?”

            What???? I start laughing. Where did this come from? Is she offering me a piece of fruit to allay the tension we’ve had about the price of gas and the lack of water?

            “Uhh…no, thank you,” I say. I don’t elaborate about how I don’t really like fruit. Sometimes, sure, I’ll eat an apple. But taking one out of someone’s trunk that’s been there for who know how long isn’t my idea of a good snack.

Instead, I just shake me head and watch as she takes a big bite out of the fruit.

            “You sure?” she says, chewing loudly. “I’ve got more.”

            “Nah, that’s okay, I have to go,” I rise, grabbing my keys and hat off the tabletop.

            “You have a good day now,” she calls after me as I head across the parking lot.

            “Thanks, you too,” I answer, inwardly thinking how strange it was that she offered me an apple after the tense exchange we had.

            But maybe it was a Peace Apple, as Ian suggested when I told him the story later. “You know, maybe she knew she was wrong and she wanted to give you a gift to say she was sorry.”

            I doubt it, I think. But maybe he’s right. Maybe it was a Peace Apple.

           

             

           

           

Sexy and Spiky

Photo by Getty Images

 

“I need to get my purple hair shampoo,” Alice announces to all of the women in the shower. In the Kennedy High pool locker room, after a surprisingly calm swim for a Sunday, I am trying to get warm, letting the hot stream of water cascade over my back.

            “Does it really turn your hair purple?” I holler after Alice as she shuffles back with the large plastic bottle, which is indeed, purple.

            “It’s not really purple,” she chuckles. “Well, you know…like it’s blue, you know what I mean?”

            I think of old ladies, their grey hair tinted blue. Have I seen this? Or is it just from the movies?

            “My hair used to turn green,” I comment to L, another swimmer to the left of me in the shower.

            “Oh, I loved it when the boys had green hair!” she exclaims. “It was all sexy and spiky.”

            I nod, laughing, thinking how my own green hair was just slimy and shiny. Sexy? I doubt it, but who thinks they’re sexy at 14? How can I even remember being 14? But I do remember the green hair. How in order to get it out, we’d have to douse our heads with tomato juice. Pouring thick red goo on to our heads. Me and my sisters giggling and laughing. “EWWWWW! It smells so bad!” “Nah!” my sister, P, would refute. “It’s like our heads are pizzas!” “Gross!” our little sister, L, would wrinkle her nose. Not having blonde hair, she didn’t have to undergo the tomato sauce regime to remove the chlorine sheen.

            Tomato juice was used for other untoward situations. I remember one of our dogs getting sprayed by a skunk. The stench was hideous. Potent and nauseating. The dog, of course, had just been chasing the skunk, but the skunk as skunks will do, hadn’t cottoned to this. Hence the spray. We’d take the dog into the shower, my mom drenching it with tomato juice, emptying cans and dumping them on the dog. Rubbing it in. Then rinsing. Repeating this several times. Then, after all the stench was removed (as best it could be), it was time for the Suave Green Apple shampoo. The dogs loved the results afterward. Prancing around the house, the odor of green apples wafting throughout the house.

       

     “Do you want to try some?” Alice asked another grey-haired woman in the shower.

            “Sure,” she said.

            “Aren’t you afraid of having purple hair?” I asked.

            She shook her head, “That’s okay.”

            My shower mate grinned, “I once tried to dye my hair, but it was too dark. We bleached it first, but still it wouldn’t take. I always wanted blue hair.”
            “Blue is my favorite color!” I exclaimed.

            “Exactly!” she said, turning off the shower, wringing her suit, gathering up her various hair product bottles, long toothed comb, and razor.

            Rinsing out the shampoo, I thought about the green hair of my youth. Swimming was an everyday activity. Green hair just went with the territory.

            Now?

            I wring out my hair, feeling the slimy wetness of it, glancing down at the ends.

            No green anymore. But maybe some blue? Or purple?

            “Hey, Alice,” I say, before leaving the shower area. “Do you bring your purple shampoo everyday? Maybe I could try some next time.”

            She laughs. Hearty and amused. “Of course! You’d look so cute with purple hair!”

Nodding, I think, she’s right. I would look cute with purple hair. I stand in the middle of the locker room, toweling off, listening to the chatter of the women. 

"Are you going to the march on Saturday?"

 "I'm thinking about it, are you?"  

"Swimming makes me so hungry. I'm ready to have me some Chinese!"

"Mmmm....you said it girl, let's ...."

Grinning,  I open my locker, pull out my clothes, and start to get dressed.