Poolhardy

No, no, you didn't misread that title.  Here's how the deal went down.

I spent a furious day Wednesday---no, I'd spent the previous week and a half---trying to convince my juniors that they could, they MUST, be successful in completing a research paper to pass the second semester of English III, and they had only limited time for their hard copy research in the library because the book fair would be set up after school on Thursday.  Additionally, I would be out for a medical procedure on Thursday, so they would need to be extra-disciplined about their reading and tagging articles for me or my teacher's aide to photocopy for them.  I had told them at least 4,592,883,116 OUT LOUD and INDIVIDUALLY that they had to get the title and author of their articles in reference works to be able to do citations later.  I had put it in print; I had, truly, done everything but tattoo it on my forehead and stamp it on their hands---though that may be a good idea for future classes.  (In the interest of disclosure, I should probably point out that research is my very least favorite thing to teach.  I loathe it.  I hate grading it way more than dental work---at least I get anesthetic for the dental work.  But I digress.)  However, other than complaining that there was nothing on their topics/they didn't know where to look/this was too hard/why wouldn't I help them?, no one seemed terribly concerned about this title/author point I kept bleating about.  After all, tomorrow is another day, right?  Problem was, I didn't know whether any of us were going to make it to tomorrow at the rate we were going.  I might spontaneously combust and take them with me at any time. 

Our library is much too small for the size of classes we have at LG now, and by last hour, when I have 27 students squeezed in there, milling around and trying to do everything except what they are supposed to do, it makes me absolutely insane, to the point of babbling and cowering in a corner.  (Not really---I only wish.)   I'm intensely claustrophobic in a situation like that, where I can't control the environment down to the Nth degree, so by the end of first hour, my hair starts sweating---even pinned up, it's dripping.  (All right, I admit it:  I hate sweating even more than teaching research.)  By 7th hour, I probably looked like I'd put in a full day in the field.  And then, our assistant principal comes in and begins to observe.  At first I didn't realize...she was there to evaluate me.  Really, I have no memory of what came after that, but only because I'm consciously blocking how ridiculous the scenario must have looked to her. 

Last bell, I trotted off to my cool room, a fan on my face, and a small group of students who needed to make up tests from the week before.  After I got them all cleared out, I went back to the library, grabbed a cart stacked with reference books my students had tagged, and shuffled off to spend a sweaty hour in the copy room trying to make at least a small dent in them and fuming because they STILL weren't tagging their articles correctly.  At 4:55, I threw everything back on the cart, returned it to the library, and raced out of the parking lot, headed for a blissful kick-butt hour in the pool for deep-water aerobics.  I was ready to work off the day's considerably raging head of steam.  Anyone who knows me well knows that it takes me a while to get this mad, but when it hits, I get irrationally pissed off at the world.  Often, it makes me say comically stupid things.  Never, ever, does it escape; I turn it inward, like all good depressives do.  But Wednesday's cocktail of frustration, professional embarrassment, AND anger turned into....are you sure you're ready?....the closest thing to fisticuffs I've ever experienced. 

I made it to the pool, went skittering through the locker room business and equipment room, and slipped into the too-warm water, a problem we often seem to have.  I honestly didn't notice at first; I was still replaying that humiliating 7th hour.  I greeted our instructor, Yolanda, whose three kids I taught, and my other classmates, two of whom I knew and a new older lady, and said hey to Debbie, who was swimming in the lap lane with her husband Steve.  I taught their youngest daughter, April.  Then I realized there was some random fellow of indeterminate age swimming right next to the lap lane, but outside of it, in our class space.  His swim cap and goggles made him unidentifiable to us all.  Yolanda and the ladies were kind of looking back and forth at him, like they kept expecting him to figure out that he was in OUR dance space, not the other way around, but he seemed oblivious.  After a couple of his laps, Yolanda said, "Sir, we have a class at this end of the pool for the next hour."  He hardly slowed down, saying, "I'm just going to stay over on this side."  COMPLETELY blew her off.  That was the next-to-last-straw:  one simply does not treat another adult that way, especially a person as polite and gentle as Yolanda.  (I later found out that was the second time he'd been rude to her about the issue; she'd already told him once before I got to the pool.)  Rhonda, who was my classmate next to me, and I kept trying to just be inconveniently in his path when he came by our way, but he would swim around us and totally ignore the point we were making. 

Finally, the young lifeguard caught him at the shallow end of the pool and began having a conversation with him.  We all watched surreptitiously as the man started gesturing, obviously arguing with him about wanting to continue his swim uninterrupted.  The next thing I saw, Steve and Debbie were getting out of the swim lane, and this "man" (only a child would behave such; I can't take someone like that seriously as a man), this BRAT was moving into the lane while Steve and Debbie began swimming laps across the pool at the shallow end. 

My friends, dear readers, I lost it.  I saw one too many people acting like an immature crybaby for one day.

I was in 9 feet of water, but I LEVITATED about three-quarters of the way out of the water and screamed at him, "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!  This is our classroom---no grown man would dare come in and say 'I'm just going to use this side of your classroom'!  And they were in the lane first!  How dare you run them out!"  Dimly, I became aware of voices:  the lifeguard shouting, "Ma'am!  Ma'am!  He paid his money, too!  Let him alone!  Ma'am!" and Debbie waving me down with, "Don't worry about it, Cathy," and Yolanda behind me saying calmly, "Let it go, Cathy---"        Meanwhile, crybaby started his laps like nothing ever happened. 

I began churning the water furiously, racing on sprints like I never had sprinted before.  Muttering curses and phrases like "travesty of justice" under my breath, I told Yolanda, "Let's just do sprints all hour!"  With a chuckle, she reminded me that the water was a little too warm, so maybe that was a bad idea.  It was a quiet hour, though usually there are at least one or two people chattering a little too much for me to hit my Zen attitude the way I want.  But the only interruption I knew was when the stranger in class said, "I feel like I know you from somewhere," but I assured her that she didn't if her kids didn't go to Locust.  Otherwise, I was Super-Zen that hour, not realizing how I would pay the next day in sore muscles and stiff joints; it was something like a bomb went off and my body absorbed the impact.  I worked off that frustration but good.   By the time we moved to the shallow end the last ten minutes for ab work and stretching, I had begun to laugh at myself.  I apologized to Yolanda and my classmates and later the lifeguard (who was very understanding, since the guy had pissed him off, too), and we all completely ignored lap boy when he left the pool. 

I have never once had a physical fight in my life, not even with my brother or sister, which most people assure me is standard for siblings.  I've gotten punched once breaking up a fight between a couple of junior high girls, and been threatened by a student, but nothing else even close.  But I do believe I might have punched that guy square in the mouth if we had been on dry land.  It was an unforgivable breach of etiquette and just general bad manners---but it was on his part, and mine, too.  At least my part was funny, after a while.  His was just self-absorbed narcissism.

And the stranger who was sure she knew me?  Yep, she did; we figured it out.  I sang at that nice Christian lady's daughter's wedding more than 20 years ago.  It must be a variant of Murphy's Law:  If you're going to make a jackass of yourself, it's always going to be even more embarrassing than you could imagine.