Hi! So before I get into the funky stuff, I’ll just point out that I’ve accumulated this list of shit over the past three years. I work for a city-funded community center. In the pool area itself, there’s a water-spewing playground for little kids to slide down from, a larger water-slide that is two stories high at the peak, and a shallow to deep pool that’s twenty yards in length. Elsewhere in the building are a gym, an entire workout floor with a separate weight room, walking track, indoor playground (think old McDonald’s type shit), a climbing wall, and an ice rink.
The pool isn’t a huge department to work necessarily. And lately, since staff has been basically rotating from newly hired to newly fired every few months, it’s common to work alone or with one other person.
I don’t know if this kind of stuff happens at other pools, it might just be us. But if you do have experiences with similar stuff, please PM me. I’d love to know that I’m not crazy for this.
- We have swimming lessons taught here four nights a week - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. A myriad of difficulties from Parent/Child, which is the aimed for babies and young toddlers, to Level 5, which really just focuses on fine tuning a person’s breaststroke, front crawl, and butterfly. I don’t teach, since I don’t have nearly enough patience for it. All I do is sit for two and a half hours, watching, and maybe sternly tell some troubling kids to listen to their damn teacher. So last mid-July/August, Parent/Child’s were held on the second and fourth Thursdays. God, I don’t know how to fuckin’ say it. One of the babies, maybe about five months old, had scales gathered in patches on their lower legs, around the wrists and forearms, and on the rib cage area. In that last batch on the ribs, they’d almost split open periodically in what looked like gills. And like, even though it was freaky as hell, the kid was adorable. Didn’t look in pain from it or anything. Not like I’d know what to do if they were. That feels mildly out of my first aid range of care, frankly.
- When I asked my supervisor (whom I’ll call C for the duration of this) about this because curiously enough, I don’t see amphibious-looking children on the regular, she promptly told me not to worry about it and don’t say anything to the guardians.
- One of the biggest and most advertised benefits of working here was a free membership for employees. So that’s free access to all amenities listed prior as if I were a normal patron. No special hours, though. Can’t go night-swimming, unfortunately. I used this feature regularly when I was first hired. I’d switch back and forth between the workout floor and laps in the pool. Nearly a year and a half into this routine, I had to forego my typical routine. I usually swim in solely Adult Swim hours in the morning because the possible cacophony of annoying children when I want to chill makes me tempted to lightly strangle one with my goggles. However, because the pool was closed at my normal time for security camera installments, I instead begrudgingly went during Open Swim. It’s a polar opposite atmosphere during Open Swim. Sweet chlorine mixing with the stench of sweat makes anxiety in the pit in my stomach rumble at the thought of people watching, judging silently. Amid the boys nearly hitting me with the basketballs and almost colliding with a six year old fumbling with a full face mask that she definitely can’t have here, I reached the lap lane without significant hindrance. Once I finished tying my hair up and donning goggles, I submerged and glided into my first length of front crawl. Then second, third, and fourth. From there, I switch to breaststroke for four. On my eighth length, I switch back to front crawl. It’s about midway through the length that I realize. The water doesn’t taste like chlorine anymore. For some reason, it tastes sour like raspberries, sweet as syrup, and… foreign. Like nothing I’ve experienced before. It bubbled through my mouth like soda and rattled the back of my teeth as if they threatened to corrode. By the end of the length, the light green tint of my goggles’ lenses had morphed the expansive pool into fractalizing phases of purple, dark green, and maroon. Given I’d ended at the deep end and had been on what felt like a bad LSD trip, I just held onto the edge of the pool, eyes closed and head flat on the gutter.
- Frankly, I don’t remember anything after that point. But according to the guard posted at Shallow, I didn’t move until he’d come over and asked if I was fine. Even then, I needed his help exiting and into the pool office where I stayed, sleeping, until waking, gathering my shit, and dipping.
I might update if I can remember other happenings myself or gossip with some people to find out anything else weird. o/