Pool Boy

I have a pool. Yep, a real, live, in-ground, tons-of-concrete-used-to-hold-gallons-of-water pool that has become the bane of my existence for all but about 14 days a year.

When I bought my house, which was condemned at the time, the pool actually had fish in it. My friends and I marveled at the resilience of nature and how these fish had gotten into the pool. My theory was that a bird had eaten some fish eggs at the lake, then flown over the pool and pooped at precisely the right moment to drop the eggs in the pool. Made sense to me until the day I came home to find a note from Agent Ventura, a county employee and most likely the inspiration for Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. The note was simply his business card with the words, "I need my fish back. Call me" written on the back. I still have the note because how many times in a girl'fe life does she get such a note? Hopefully just once.

Apparantly, there was no miracle of nature, rather, the county had placed minnows in the brackish water for mosquito abatement. Now they were demanding their return. For what purpose I am not sure. Perhaps there were more stagnant pools in the county and these were specially trained minnows, particularly skilled at mosquito eating in cement ponds. Ever the law-abider, I did not question the logic and called Agent Ventura to arrange a date and time for him to pick up the fish, which he explained was was a delicate and precise process because the fish could die if held in buckets too long. It was all very complicated but I followed Ventura's instructions and got a bunch of buckets and saved as many of the fish as I could while draining the pool. It took about four extra hours to do because I was carefully saving the little fish. That day, no one came to pick up the fish so I left them outside in the buckets for a couple of days, thinking Ace would be by. He never came by and I ended up with several buckets of dead minnows. That was my first experience in pool ownership.

After I cleaned the pool, I used it as as skate park for a few weeks and then decided to paint it that bright blue pool color. Of course, pool paint is different than regular paint in some unknown way so it costs about $80 per gallon. And it takes a lot of paint to do a pool. Still, it looked so pretty when I was done and I was so pleased I couldn't wait to fill the pool and start swimming. Years later I learned you shouldn't paint your pool because it doesn't stay on, no matter how special the paint. It starts peeling off a few years down the road, then gets powdery and makes swimmers look chalky. They think I'm poisoning them and never return. I just thought I was incapable of tanning, turns out it's the chalk in the pool that's turned me white. Maybe Michael Jackson has the same issues at Neverland.

One problem I quickly learned about pool ownership is that once you've taken the fish out, sandblasted and painted the thing, you've got to maintain it. You always have to be doing something to keep it clean: sweeping, chemicalling, skimming, adding stuff, measuring stuff, cleaning the filters. And then there's the electricity to run the pump. It's a pain in the butt. Sure it's fun to go skinny dipping and catch the neighbor boys falling out of trees with their binoculars, but beyond that it mostly just sits there. I despise the upkeep. So after years of self-maintenance, and once I finished law school, I decided to get a pool man.

I wanted one of those hot pool men who would come over and clean the pool shirtless while I sipped lemonade and giggled with my girlfriends on the phone. Then I would offer him a cold glass inside and nature would take its course. Or it would be so hot one day we would both go for a dip...Ah, yes, I thought, a hot pool boy would be nice!

Turns out one of the guys from my gym said he was a pool guy. Perfect. Sammy is very handsome, fit, and a nice guy. I also knew he liked older women (he was 22) because he'd had an affair with a fellow lawyer who worked out at the same gym. She was a nut so I knew he wasn't picky either. So I called him and arranged to get my pool serviced. He said he'd come every Tuesday morning. Perfect.

The first Tuesday Sammy was supposed to come I made sure I was home, wearing something hot, hair done, looking like I was off to the office just in time to run into him. Not that he hadn't seen me at the gym looking frightening, but this would show him my softer side - the successful pool owner/don't-mind-the-pig/my-what-a-big-hose-you-have side. Imagine my surprise when a short, squat, balding, old guy showed up with the hoses and gear. The pool guy was Sammy's dad, Mo, a fast-talking Lebanese refugee turned self-made pool mogul. And, of course I was looking good and Mo thought it he had struck gold with a lonely, single career woman in need of his special services. He moved in for the kill and no sooner had I said I was out of lemons, than he was in my house looking commenting on the artwork. He was quite smarmy and I quickly told him I had to get to work. He soon began the campaign and started calling me under the guise of talking about my pool. He even invited to his house for dinner! Of course, his tune changed about a year ago when I learned he was married and pointed that out to him one day when he asked me to go somewhere. Not only did that stop the advances, my pool cleaning bill was discounted by $15 a month!

Finally, I thought, there was balance in the world, at least with regard to the pool. Mo came on Tuesdays, sometimes with Sammy, the pool was clean, there was no harassment, and I was getting all this at a discount. So you can imagine my surprise Monday at work when I received a call from Mo. I had just had him install a new whisper-soft, eco-groovy, energy-saving, mega-sucker 3000 pump and assumed there was a problem. Nope, nothing wrong with the pool. Mo had called to inform me that he and his wife were finally divorced. Nothing else. Just that he is now divorced. What this has to do with my pool is beyond me so I guess I have to go back to my Tuesday mornings in hiding days. Or just fire the pool man and get some minnows.