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.