sid

i had another incident with a different guy at the pool today.
the guy's name was sid.
he's about a head and shoulders shorter than me and about 80 - 90 something.
he looked something like the human version of yoda.
this guy was moving so damn slow.
the twenty-foot walk from the pool to the hottub took him about a minute and a half.
he sat down at the steps of the hottub.
rob, the swim instructor warned me about him. said he'd probably fall trying to get out of the tub.
great.

so i, for once, kept an eye out on him.
after a while i noted what time it was to see how long he'd been chilling in the hottub. usually you only want to be in for about 15 mins max.
after about 10 minutes of me recording his time in the hottub i walked over to see what was up.
he seemed to fidget around a bit, but was calm otherwise.
so in a rare moment, i asked him how he was doing.
i couldn't hear dick.
not only is there a recently loud light fixture that buzzes at such a decibal that loud voices are all that can be heard when standing under it. but ontop of this, sid kept looking down and talking in a voice that must have not used his diaphragm at all.
eventually i detected a hint of want for me to help him up.
i grabbed an arm and eased him up. he was probably getting boiled alive in there!
with the help of his cane, he made his way up the three hottub steps.
i let him be.
but then my conscience got the better of me and i went back to ask if he needed additional assistance.
i usually like to be kind to people's ego, especially old people, cuz a lot of the time they don't want to face the fact that they can't do something on their own.
but sid was as eager as a pallid-faced man could be for a bit of help.
so i grabbed his left hand, and he had his four-legged cane in his right.
his gripped hand pulsated, mimicing his heart beat. don't know what that was all about, but it was quite eerie.
after about thirty seconds we were in (my) arm's length to a chair.
to save myself another half a minute of hand-holding, i reached as far as i could and pulled the chair to sid.
he plopped down, rested his head on his chest and took a little nap.

rob phoned his wife...

when she got there, she had me wake him up.
by now i got used to sid-talk and understood that he wanted my help again.
after the 45 seconds it took to get to the lobby door, his wife began scolding him on how they were late.
(late for what?! his funeral? ok that was evil. but really. what do 90 year-olds have to do in a day?)
i thought she was exceptionally harsh for what he'd just been through.
he murmured something that his wife didn't even understand. so maybe the voice he was using wasn't his usual voice, or else his wife would have probably understood him (like how the wife of the guy with the voicebox understands everything he says).

anyway. i was still attached to sid at the hand and i escorted him into the showers. in there, there were two naked men.
great.
each at either end of the group shower stall.
sid drug me through the tail-end of the guy's shower at the near end of the stall.
fun.
then he made his way across to one of the open showers.
still holding my hand, he uses his right hand to turn on the shower.
he starts to lift his left arm (with mine still attached) and does that whole rubbing under the armpit bit like they always do in shower soap commercials.

so since i'm not about to take a shower with a 90 year-old man, i guide his left hand to the safety bar that lines the showers at about waist-level and i get the FUCK out of there, keeping my line of sight away from all man-wang.

such is the life of a lifeguard...