Casual Friday

At the pool Thursday, I was playing catch with a 7 year-old named Marcus.
The ball was a palm-sized soft-rubber basketball.
After many a throw, the ball landed in the pool.
I bent over to pick it up while Marcus came up behind me.

With the slightest push, I lost my balance and all moment went pool-side.
I was able to turn and face away from the water, but it was no use.
Down I went into the water. A slow-motion splashdown.
It felt like Will Farell's same fall into the pool from Old School.
Cognizant of what was going on around me, but unable to react.

Luckily all I had on were shorts, a shirt and my hat. I had spare shorts, but no shirt.
So I put everything wet into the sauna.
I went back into the water where Marcus kept wanting to play; me from the water and him from the pool deck.
He kept throwing our vast supply of those small basketballs at me until they were all on the other side of the pool.
Then he ran over there and repeated the onslaught.

The thing though, is that Marcus has yet to realize the consequences of his actions.
One of the balls he threw interrupted the swim lessons going on by hitting one of the 7 year-old girls in the face.

The girl was trying to figure out whether or not it was worth crying about. Eventually she realized it was, which made me feel bad.

I tried to chastize Marcus by telling him that he hit her in the face, that he needs to watch where he's throwing the ball, and that we can't play anymore because of what he'd done.

Marcus looked me directly in the eye and told me he didn't hit her in the face.
Then he got out of the pool and again started to throw basketballs.
My authority is nonexistent.

It took one of the moms of the kids who got hit to tell Marcus to stop before he actually would.
Maybe it's because Marcus doesn't have a father-figure in his life so he only listens to a motherly-type figure.
Hopefully it's not just the fact that I'm a pushover.

Then came Friday.

I've come to enact my own casual Friday.
This involves wearing nothing that remotely resembles lifeguard attire.
I'm only there for 3.5 hrs now, and no one comes on Fridays anyway, so I assume it doesn't matter.

But the story that comes along with Friday was when one of my buddies came and after a bit of conversation started to swim.
While he was doing this, a family of four came in along with a few people from their extended family.
In all they were 10.

They start playing and doing kid stuff; throwing balls, much like Marcus had been doing.
I go into the boiler room to make sure the bromine feeder was off.
When I come out, Clement from the front desk comes out and informs me that my buddy swimming just had an incident with one of the kids.

Apparently two of them collided.
My buddy doesn't wear goggles while he swims, so he saw nothing coming.
The kid's goggles hit my buddy's forehead. He stood up and said a few nasty words.
I don't know if this was before or after he realized it was a kid.
Either way, him getting hit wasn't right.
The kids are old enough to know where and where not they should be playing.

I had a few words with my buddy later who went on about how he pays enough money to where he should feel safe here and not have to worry about kids running into him.
He's right. I happened to be doing an odd job while it happened.
He also mentioned that the kid should know better, which is true.
He showed me the bump on his head.
He seemed more dissappointed than pissed.
I felt bad.

Later on that night when we were closing, the family came up to me and wanted to know who the man was. They said he said things to the child in question that wasn't acceptable.

The hard part here is that I know both sides. I know them rather well, actually.
So I had to stay neutral and tell them that I had no idea what went down (which I still don't. I don't know whether the kid jumped on my buddy, plain ran into him, or if somehow my buddy is to blame.) So I told them that until I knew what had happened, I wasn't going to say anything.
They accepted this and instead of explaining their side, just exited the building.

But what is that? Two situations in two days where kids go wild and no reprocussions fall on them. Marcus hits the girl and his mom (who is supposed to be on the pool deck) isn't on the pool deck, and this kid who ran into my buddy (as I heard from my buddy) didn't even apologize!
Then the parents were looking for retribution for what the guy did in the aftermath of the situation that should have been prevented if the kid was more aware of what was going on around him. The same goes for Marcus.

I used to say that kids don't know any better, but I believe they do.
Although, if parents don't make them know any better, then the won't care to.

Hopefully if I'm ever a parent I won't let my kids get into situations like that.
They're going to behave.
I won't have to be a pushover like I am now because they'll be my kids, and I can whoop their monkey-asses if I need to.

Oh. btw. I also took pictures on Friday between all the mayhem.