Award Tour Vol. 11: Because Someone Else Said It Was Safe

It’s two days after we’ve arrived… exactly one day after the most blood-curdling shooting performance on a regulation height rim since John Starks laced them up and went 2 for 18 in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals (yeah I know mathematically Tim Hardaway’s game against Minnesota in 1991 was worse, but Golden State still won… and who’s telling this story anyway?) So yeah, road trip, arrival, blood curdle, 0 for infinity, yada yada yada read about it here Award Tour 10.

I’m ready to move on from this ugly chapter in our trip… but what to do? Enter Stage Left: King/Drew amenities. I have to say, for a hospital, this place is quite well laid out. A courtyard, black top for basketball, resident parking, a swimming pool… Shoot this place is one “Arts and Crafts” class away from being a time share.

We gave it some thought and decided to go swimming. And because we’re on blog installment #11 you should know that right about here, in the 3^rd to 4^th paragraph range, is usually where things start to go sideways…

…this time will be no different.

It begins with Tre walking slowly and methodically around the perimeter of the pool; a look of confusion on his face as he surveyed the surroundings. If that look could speak I’m sure that it would be saying:

• Why is there a large congregation of dead floating bio matter in this pool? It looks like a partially digested bowl of cornflakes was projectile vomited into the water.

In a sane world, Questions like this deserved to be asked (that’s why I live in this world, to ask the questions that ought to be asked... and it doesn't hurt that the taxes are pretty low) In a world where freedom and justice rain down on us all, you would go to the Building Director and ask, “when will the pool be cleaned?” In a world gone mad, the answer will be "the pool has already been cleaned". In my own personal world (the one that’s sane), the sound effect of a needle being ripped off a record would definitely be inserted right here, but feel free to compose your own soundtrack. That’s what’s great about America – choice.

Director: "The pool should be fine. Maintenance already came by. It’s safe to go swimming. People have been in the pool all week"
Tre: "Maintenance came by where?”
Director: "Here”
Tre: "This hospital?"
Director: "Yes"
Tre: "You sure that wasn’t maintenance for something else?"

Director: “No they were here to clean the pool”
Tre: "the one out back?"
Director: "There’s only one"
Tre: "Then you have a problem, cause they didn’t clean it"
Director: "It’s on the schedule right here – see the 20th"
Tre: "Of when?"

Director: “This month”

Tre: "No, what year"

For the record, on the inside I’m laughing at Tre’s exchange. Not because the in-ground swamp behind the hospital wasn’t deadly serious… but because Tre seemed to think he could prevail with logic. What good was his logic against signed paperwork? You can’t argue with a dated time sheet… the mere existence of the paperwork establishes its own reality.

So it seems we’ve reached an impasse. When two conflicting realities collide that’s usually what they call it… an impasse, (and even if they don’t, that’s what we’re going with here). In Tre’s reality (a reality which, I’d like to point out, I personally share) the swimming pool is perhaps right for killing off fresh water fish, maybe even fit for ritual human sacrifice, but is in no way suitable for swimming… not for any carbon based life forms I’m aware of (and I’ve watched a lot of Discovery Channel, so yeah, factor that in while you’re deciding whether or not I have the credentials to comment on Carbon Based Life Form habitats).

How nasty is this pool? Let me draw you an analogy. If there was a biological attack somewhere in the U.S. (God forbid), the CDC would name this pool, “a person of interest". It is not hard to imagine that, if left alone, this water could successfully incubate an exotic strain of alien ebola that would wipe out North America. It could happen easily. And nobody wins when the alien ebola wins…

…except the alien ebola.

Now… in the Building Director’s reality (the one established entirely by paperwork and notary) the pool was clean. Her calm demeanor, her casual indifference to our questions, her immunity to abject disbelief was as close to a jedi mind trick that this side of eternity has ever seen. It was like one of Obi Wan Kenobi’s wave of the hand that sent facts and observations hurtling into the ether. Hell before I knew it, I was headed back out to the back to look at the pool again to re-convince myself, that I had seen what I knew I had seen already.

I’m not crazy right? This pool is filthy isn’t it? Tre and I walked back out and looked at the composte floating under, in, and on top of the water. This is a fool’s errand. We have eyes, and they function… we know what we saw. Why are we back out here? This is the pool of water that killed off the dinosaurs (nevermind that it was actually an asteroid that did it).

If people had been swimming in this all week, as the Building Director suggested, it wasn’t even a pool anymore… it was a deadly human broth of recycled bathwater. And unlike Campbells… this isn’t “mmm mmm good”…

…unless you’re the alien ebola, then it’s everything a growing virus needs.

Top it all off, Tre and I found an old faded notice posted by the Dept. of Public Health shutting down the pool for numerous code violations (every last one of them in effect at the time the pool was allegedly cleaned) and yet people had been sploshing around in it. There wasn’t even supposed to be water in the pool, let alone people. The moral of the story: Be willing to question your reality, but believe it once you know it. What people say and/or some words on a piece of paper doesn’t change what you know. And if you jump in the "cauldron of death" because someone else said it was safe, remember you are the one that gets the flesh eating bacteria, not them.