~48~ Tommy in The Toilet
"No good deed ever goes unpunished"~ Great Genghis, Khan of Khans
💀💀💀
Summer - June 22nd (Mayday –58 Away)
So as fate and fortune would have it, on the tenth day into my new job, I have my first, worst and last save of my summer at the Plunge.
I am walking circles around my personal little ring of blazing hell, when a towhead two-year-old kid has tried his best to get his head jammed sideways into the flip drain. This little daredevil has been left unsupervised by a less than observant mid-thirties mother wearing a black and white polka dot bottom-heavy two-piece bathing suit. The once almost sexy suit might have fit her bulbous buttocks after child one, but definitely not after child three. As the swollen cottage cheese thighs on display seem to scream in protest.
This poor excuse for a mother in question is less than four feet away from the drowning deathwish boy. But of course, she is right in the middle of a "No! You cannot have another Blue slushy, Timmy you'll ruin your lunch again!" tirade. Screaming at what I can only assume are the victim's two older siblings, glaring at Polka Dot just on the other side of the low safety fence.
After trying twice to get this idiot's attention while walking my circuit, I finally give up and slosh across the toilet. Reaching down and gently extract the drowning kid out and up from the drain, where I set him on the edge of the pool. I fully expect this kid to start shrieking at me in rage or fear. But to my surprise, this kid is grinning at me like a grommet, and only slightly gasping for air. I give him a quick once over, check his vitals and breathing, and peering down into his excitedly blinking eyes checking for any sign of lethargic reactions. Only to be interrupted by a screeching tone from the bulbous Polka Dots behind me.
"What do you think you're doing to my kid?" The gum-snapping idiot barks at me from the knee-high fence.
"Checking your kid's reactions? Because he's had his head in the drain for almost fifteen seconds." I stand tall and face her down. "You know while you were arguing with your other kids and not paying attention to the one that actually needed you the most?" I eye her coldly. "And you are chewing gum in the 'No gum' zone."
All thirty chitty chatty conversations around the ol' Toilet Bowl now stop dead cold.
"Excuse me? What did you just say to me?" Youngish mother of three in the painful black and white polka dot bikini is now gonna dig in hard. Clearly filled with the "How dare you speak to me that way" righteous indignation. But unfortunately for me, I will take that dare. So I back away from the tottering child on the edge of the pool, and leave the deathwish kid to his cruel fate.
"Like I already told you lady, I was checking your kid's breathing. After I had to pull his head out of this flip drain." I tap the drain top for emphasis. "Where he was submerged, while I attempted to get your attention ...twice? But as you were clearly too busy arguing, with what I can only assume are your other two kids about ruining their lunch with slushies at the top of your voice to hear me? Before having to pull his head out of said drain myself."
"And you are chewing gum in the pool against the rules." I point to the sign on the kiddy pool fence that says in no uncertain terms: NO GUM IN THE PRINCESS POOL!!!
"Which, we have that sign on the wall which clearly says "NO GUM" in all capitals, with three exclamation points. So that when you're done with your gum, none of these other kids can't get a hold of it and swallow it. Which could lead them to choke to death?" Or worse, make me scrape it up tomorrow morning during Deck Check?
"So not only are you putting your kid's life at risk of death, but all these other kids as well?" I point out the obvious.
Now the Polka Dot's scathing glare is turned around to other mothers around the edges of the Toliet.
"Well, did any of you see that? Or is this smart-mouthed kid just making things up." She snaps indignantly at all the rest of the mothers.
I watch as the flat eyes of the other twenty-seven or so other mothers deflect away. Either in embarrassment or fear of getting involved with this crazy nut case.
"Ummm? Well, I did see Tommy under the water by the drain again?" One timid youngish mother offers up hesitantly.
"Oh yeah, is that so?" She snarls at having her face rubbed in the truth.
"Mmmm...maybe?" The youngish mother shrugs, and wisely decides not to get involved anymore.
"What's your name kid?" Polka Dot immediately changes up her attack.
"Darren." I drone back.
"Darren what?" She snaps.
"Dean."
"Well, Darren Dean?" She hips up towards me defiantly, "I think I'm just gonna go talk to my old friend, and your boss Buzzy, about your attitude problem. What do you think about that?"
It's only then that she seethe-breathes at me, that I now know without a doubt the explanation for the attitude ...and the gum. Because it's now obvious to me she has clearly been drinking something besides blue slushie. Now that we are close enough, I can clearly smell the medicinal stench of vodka mixed with acidic fruit juice. Which based on my own long-standing parental drunkard experience, she's had more than just a sip or two to dull the morning migraine of yesterday's binge.
"I think while you were drunkenly slurring your words at me, your kid's head is stuck in the drain...again?" I counter evenly nodding down to the deathwish, who now has wedged his head firmly inside the drain again.
"What?!?" She shrieks back.
I point down to the drain opening, where little Tommy Tombstone is flailing away to get himself back in the drain. Going again for his transition to the next life, and far away from the crazy lady as possible. Cause it seems pretty clear to me that young Tommy boy is nothing but persistent in his wish to end his earthly visit with his poor excuse of a drunken mother. Sadly, based on my own childhood, this a deathwish that I can almost empathize with.
"Gawddammit! Tommy!" Mrs. Polka-Dot yanks the rascal out of the drain by the arm. In the process bounces his head off the concrete edge for effect, and gives him a solid whack on the ass for good measure. Tommy is now wailing back like a banshee, and he has a nice bleeding noggin knocker to go with his not so nice mother.
"It appears that you hit your child's head on the edge of the pool? Which is now bleeding, prior to beating him." I drone. "Pool protocol dictates that you and your child must now leave the Princess pool. So please take your child directly to the First-aid station."
"You can't speak to me like that! Do you not know who my father is?" She seethes low close to my face and the sour stench of yesterday's drunk is rancidly apparent.
"Nope, I not know, who's your daddy?" I reply back in drunkenese, sadly a language that I am all too conversational in. "So leave please the pool immediately. Have a nice day, on your way gone. Please empty of your gun in the bin located outside the safety fence."
"You're going to regret this!" She seethes back at me, dragging Tommy by the arm out of the pool towards her big gulp of fun. "When I tell Buzzy who you are and get you fired!"
"Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of your slurring. But I too will also be reporting to your good friend Buzz. That you appear more than a little intoxicated ...this early in the morning? Perhaps you'd like to file a full report with the paramedics?" I smile coldly down at her massive to-go-cup. "Or would you like just like me to go ahead and call 911, for you and your father? So then you can explain some more slurred words about how the pool rules don't apply to you?"
Now the Polka Dot drunk is clearly furious and looking for a fight. But she's also stuck, and even though the alcoholic haze she knows it. Because she's the sort of transition drunk that forgets how much she's had to drink the night before. The type that wakes up drunk but doesn't really feel it. So she thinks because she got a good night sleep, ie passed out ...that upon waking she's fine. Problem is, that an adrenaline rush is a bitch for transitional drunks like this idiot. That the sever hangover quickly turns into a second hammering real fast when the liver disgorges all it's leftover old alcohol back into the bloodstream.
So she does the first smart thing of the morning. She yanks poor Tommy up out of the water and hips her bulbous butt over the safety fence away from the problem. Namely me, calling her out on her early morning alcoholism.
"Don't think this is over! This is not even close to over!" She seethes at me from behind the three-foot-high fence and makes her escape right out the front gate towards the First-aid station.
"Okay, thank you, come again. And good drunk with your kids." I drone in her wake.
After Polka-dot is gone, I begin yet another circle around my never-ending hell bowl. All the other mothers immediately go back to whispering quietly among themselves. I do however note a decided lack of gum chewing, so that is something I suppose?
Until an hour later when Corky Collins aka Mini Midnight, the younger dumber brother of Captain Midnight shows up. To relieve me from the toilet with a "Buzzy wants you in the office. Pronto."
So my first unofficial Plunging save comes with my first chewing out by Buzzy and the Plunger Boys. As soon as I walk into the pool office I can tell that Buzzy is clearly pissed off at the recent turn of events. As he is marching back and forth before the troops in his office.
"Do you have any idea the crap storm that you caused today, with that stunt you pulled in the Princess pool!?!" Buzzy bellows at the water beyond his wide office window. "The only thing I can't figure out is if you are insane, or on drugs? Or maybe you're just too retarded to do your job and just keep your damn smart mouth shut?"
Instead of answering the stupidity, I merely stare out the long one-way window at the pools behind him. Watching all the little savages run around unsupervised, trying to kill themselves with slip and falls. I really have to wonder what Terry Something would say about this decided lack of sprinting supervision at the moment?
"Well? Say something stupid." He snaps at me, with what is clearly a trick question.
"The kid went under and almost drown in the drain. While not even three feet away, the mother was yelling with her other brats outside the little gate." I shrug off the stupidity. "I tried to get her attention twice, but she kept waving me off. So I pulled the drowning kid up and out of the water. You know ...instead of just letting him drown? All the while his drunk mother kept screaming at the other two unfortunates she owns."
"Yep, that all that happened." Brad chimes in almost helpfully.
"So then you let the kid stick his head down in the drain again while arguing with his mother?" Buzzy counters evenly. "Right in front of no less than thirty other mothers? So that's when you decide to call Dotty a drunk? Then you told her she was too drunk to remain in the pool? Is that what I am hearing you say?"
"No, I obviously pulled the kid out of the water. Then and started checking over his vitals to make sure he was breathing right. No gurgles, no foaming, no signs of secondary drowning." I rattle off the checklist quickly. "Which was when the polka dot mother starts flipping out on me. So I backed away and calmly explained to her that the kid in the pool needed her attention much more than the slushy kids on the other side of the safety fence."
"So you felt the need to start smarting off to her, about her lack of attention and gum chewing?" Chad aka Captain Midnight chimes in unhelpfully. "Then you kicked her out of the toilet, cause you thought she might have smelled like booze? Is that what I'm hearing you saying, Princess?"
"Yeah, I told her there was no gum allowed in the Toliet Bowl. Just like the giant red sign with three exclamation points on the wall says." I ignore the idiot, because he is utterly ignorable. "At which point she decides to get in my face and started slurring her words. Which was when I could clearly smell the alcohol on her breath."
"So yeah, I called her out on her drunk. And yeah, I kicked her out of the pool." I turn on Chad hard, cause Chad is the epitome of douchey lifeguard dude. The kind of douche I pretty much couldn't stand this ass from the moment I met him. He reminds me a little of a Tom Cruise wannabe. But not cool Top Gun Tom Cruise, much more of the crazy culty couch-jumping Tom.
"It was barely eleven in the morning, and she's already tanked up to the point I can smell her from four feet away?" I dead eye them hard. "So you tell me, what was I supposed to do? Let her yell at me for doing my job right? After she left her two-year-old unattended in the Toilet and he almost drowns on my watch? Or let the dangerous drunk have her moment, cause she still so hungover that she is still hammered?"
"Or should I have just let her keep bouncing the kids head on the pavement and beating on the bleeder some more? Just so she could completely contaminate the pool for the other kids with even more of his blood?" Something else that would have required the pool to be closed down immediately and decontaminated. "So you tell me, which one of those do you do Captain Midnight?"
I can see that the plungers are having a really hard time now thinking through all the stupidity to get to the obvious answer.
"Well? Say something stupid." I snort imitating Buzzy.
"I hate to say it Buzzy, but I think Dean made right call on this thing." Brad shrugs. "Two of the regular mothers chatted me up after Dottie left off in a huff. They both pretty much everything he just said is right on the money. Especially, about young Tommy getting his head stuck in the drain ...twice? And Dot did bounce his head off the pavement so hard he started bleeding. So yeah, I gotta go with Darren on this one?"
"But the way he said it came off 'surly'. Which was the way two of them described the 'tude he copped with Dot." Captain Midnight comes in again for the rescue.
"Smart-ass attitude? Sure maybe? But not wrong?" Brad shakes his head slowly. "More than one person has told me that Dottie isn't just drinking juice smoothies in that oversized mug of hers either." Brad makes the raised pinky the universal sign for an alcoholic. "Dot used pulled the same vodka and V8 trick when we were in high school all the time. And everybody knew it back then too."
"The only thing I don't get is why she is in our pool this summer, and not at up the Hunt club where she belongs? Where they bring the booze right to you in the pool." Chad is now pondering the horror Polka-Dot must have felt slumming it at the Plunge.
"Because at the Hunt Club pool all the drink orders go on their chits, dumbass." Brad rolls his eyes. Not for the first time, do I get the sense that these two Buzzard minions are not exactly the best of buds. "So then when her daddy gets the monthly bill? He'll know exactly how much she is putting away on the regular every day. It's one thing to know about a problem, but it's a totally another thing to be flipping the bill for it."
"That's neither here nor there." Buzzy waves the mystery away and turns on me. "You have no idea who that Dottie lady is do you, Dean? No, of course you don't, because you don't actually live here, do you?"
"Nope. But somehow I have the feeling we're not exactly celebrating young Tommy's near-death experience." I counter dryly.
"That was Dottie Hendricks-Blaire, smart ass. Her father is Donald Hendricks, the county treasurer and vice-chairman of the school board. But you might know him as the man that signs your paycheck." Buzzy seethes. "All our paychecks."
"Okay? And?" I frown slightly at this revelation that I could care less about. "So you're thinking what? I'll get a raise for saving his grandson Tommy from drowning in the Toilet? While his drunken mother tried to fight with me about the gum rule?"
Buzz is now about to stroke out, when Brad can no longer hold in and bursts out laughing. Chad starts crying actual tears after he slaps himself in the leg so hard it actually leaves a welt. I can honestly say that I am proud of this at the moment. What can I say, after hanging out with Gromit Hauser all my life, I have a few funny moments of my own every now and then? Even Buzz is having a hard time keeping his rage fest going strong at this point.
"Go along to get along. You ever heard this expression, Dean?" Buzzard smirks.
"Yeah, whatever. Drunken mother's feelings or dead kid floating face down in the drain? Sorry, I didn't really think that was much of a judgment call at the Plunge." I counter back evenly.
Buzz glares at me, then turns and glares at the kiddie pool through the wide office window. Then glares up at the two o'clock sun as the sun glares back down. We all are forced to wait while our glorious Plunging leader thinks through the list of his priorities, namely his paycheck.
"What do you think Brad, you know Dottie well enough? Is she gonna run right to Daddy Hendricks or not?" Buzzy eyes narrow as he starts calculating out the damage to himself.
"Oh, without a doubt Dot will definitely run right to daddy. Just so he hears her version first and loudest." Brad nods along. "It's classic Dot to try to get the first word into any argument about anything. But only after she straightens out and sobers up. So whatever you gonna do, will have to be before she gets totally sober and starts screaming bloody murder at her father."
"Agreed." Buzzy nods, and Chad nods along with him because that's what Chad is there for. To go along and get along, with Buzzy.
"You know it suddenly occurs to me that Ol Joe Blake's been pestering me again for an extra lifeguard over at the old Annex. What do you think, boys? Maybe Old Joe could use someone of Dean's obvious caliber." Buzzy is slow to smile, and already I am not feeling good vibes about this Annex spot.
"You know the more I think of it, I think that Dean here could be a really good fit over at the Annex. For all Ol Joe's special needs?" Now Chad is nodding his head up and down really excited, which should be an indication to me that this is not going to be a "good fit" for me at all.
"I'd say that's a definite, Buzz." Chad grins jackal right back to him. "Shoot Princess PeePee here can have all my old special shifts. That'll show 'em who's the boss, Buzzy."
"Yep, it's settled. So good news Dean, you just got promoted out of the Toilet Bowl." As Buzzy announces my fate there's an evil gleam in his eye, that tells me that this piece of "good news" is highly suspect. "And even better news, seems you're gonna be Old Joe's headache from now on instead of mine?"
"Best bad alternative," Brad assures me, that this is indeed going to suck.
"Chad, here can fill you in on the specifics, seeing he's over there during the winter. So I guess all there is left to say is... good luck and good riddance. You should probably clear out your locker because one way or the other, you're not coming back here after today. Oh, and make sure you tell your grandfather I said, hey." So with that bit of brilliance done, Buzzy smirks and swaggers out the office, back towards the bikini rotunda.
"You're gonna love the Annex, Princess. It's super special ...just like you." Chad smirks douchily on Buzzy's heels, but Brad catches my eye and shakes his head negatory.
So with only ten days of Plunging under my belt, I was officially "promoted" out of the Toilet Bowl. On my way to new horizons at the Annex. To whatever new circle of "special" hell that was going to be. Upside, I doubt it can be any worse than where I was in The Toilet, right?
💀💀💀
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro