Pool Daze

A few weeks ago I was minding my own business wandering around my pool. I noticed a few black spots about the size of a quarter on the bottom surface. Naturally, I did what most males do; I ignored it, thinking it would go away. And hopefully before my wife saw it, because that would mean a trip to the local pool supply house, which will go nameless, but more than a penny gets pinched every time I walk out of the place.

So a few days latter my wife says, “Have you seen those black spots in the pool?”

“Black spots?” I replied. “Our pool has black spots in it?”

“Yeah, down by the deep end,” she said.

“Huh, black spots,” I stuck my head back in the sports page.

This was the first sign of denial, but I got the unsettling feeling my wife would be fixating on the black spots.

The feeling bore true and it manifested itself during our weekly swim with our granddaughter. By this time the black spots that once looked like a few quarters, now had the appearance of two pockets full of black change scattered on the bottom of the pool floor.

My wife is a loving grandmother; however, she missed her granddaughter’s first unassisted backstroke because of her obsession with these black spots. While we were having the time of our life, swimming, diving, and doing things Michael Phelps can only dream about. Grandma has a scrubbing pad and she’s going to work on the black spots. After what seemed like a marathon (I’ve ran one so I should know) she said, “They’re not coming up.”

I was running out of options and running out fast. I know no matter what I said it would end up with a trip down to my favorite watering hole, that’s right, the pool store.

I always feel under dressed when I walk into the neighborhood pool store, because the minute I step in, I can sense their condescending glances. Oh, the staff is friendly, but I know that they know, I’m not one of them.

The store has a monthly contest for “Perfect Pools.” They give away some cheesy pool toy or bottle of chlorine, or something. To qualify for this award, one must pass the test. You can always tell which customers studied for this test. One clue is that they’re on a first name basis with the scientist behind the counter. The other clue is that their head barely fits through the door. Anyway, if your pool test perfect by the water sample you bring in, your name goes in one of those big jars and they have a drawing at the end of the month. My name has never been in the big jar.

I walked up to the counter with water sample in toe. This is always an event in itself. Customers are yucking it up with the chemical engineers behind the counter. They’re talking P.H. balances and salt ratios, while I look at my shoes waiting to be called on. The connoisseur behind the counter finishes up with Dudley Do Right, but not before he tosses Mr. Right’s test into the big jar. “Another perfect pool Dudley, see you next week,” he said. “Can I help you?” he said to me.

With all the confidence of the “Little drummer boy” I sheepishly handed him my water sample, and then mumbled, “I have black spots in my pool.” Then my eyes looked at my shoes again.

“Are they Black or green?” he said, as he snatched the bottle out of my trembling hand.

“Well uh, kinda both, mostly black with green around it,” I said.

Immediately, without hesitation some other pool specialist, I’ll call him Doctor from here on out, shouted, “Your pool has cancer!”

The words reverberated around the chlorine stocked walls. An exiting Dudley Do Right shook his head as he went out the door. I glanced at the big jar; I shifted my eyes to the doctor and then my pupils found a familiar home, my shoes.

I was not ready for those words. What about the adjoining spa or the pool deck, how would they be provided for incase of my pools untimely demise?

“Can it be saved?” I whispered.

“Chemotherapy” the doctor said with a straight face. “We’re talking black algae.”

“Well, the pool’s had mustard algae before and I got rid of it,” I said.

As soon as I said those words I knew it was a mistake. He glared at me. I looked at my shoes.

“Sir, your pool has cancer, not a cold,” the Doctor said.

“Ah, what would cause this?” I asked.

He glanced at the big jar where all the perfect pools rest and then he looked at me.

“If the chlorine drops to zero for one second then your pool can be invaded with cancer. It could come from the yard, a tree, or any foreign debris. Once in the pool, black algae will feed off any chlorine you try to replace,” the Doctor said.

About this time my bride walks up. How do I tell the woman I love this kind of news? The song “Memories” went through my head. I closed my eyes and in slow motion, I saw us splashing around poolside, laughing, frolicking, and without care. You know, “The way we were.”

I bit my lower lip and said, “Our pool has cancer.”

I may as well said, it’s going to rain today, because she looked at me with indifference. Where’s the sympathy for our dying pool? I thought.

The Doctor made his diagnoses and was gone. He left the prescription for some lackey to fill while he went about stuffing perfect pool test in the big jar.

So we left the store armed with enough chemo to remove black algae from Lake Michigan, which caused my wallet to feel the pinch. Of course, if you’re a man, like me, you forget everything the lackey told you to do. He mentioned something about a half a bottle one thing followed by a full bottle of something else, and then wait 24 hours for another item mixed with pool water, or was it the other way around?. It really doesn’t matter right? The doctor said chemotherapy and chemotherapy it will be.

I threw everything in the pool, there’s nothing like some good old shock treatment to go along with chemo. Take that cancer and take it all at once. I poured a bottle in for the doctor, I poured a bottle in for my wife, and I poured a bottle for the big jar and Dudley Do Right. Anything I ever purchased from the pool store went in regardless of how long it’s been sitting on the shelf. I went into a frenzy. Empty bottles and jugs lay like a drunken sailor after first liberty. When I reached for the toilet bowl cleaner my wife said “Enough.” And then I looked at my shoes.

Well I’m happy to report my pool is in remission, and it appears I saved it. Who knows, maybe I’ll find my name in that big jar after all.

Last week I noticed my roof had a little sag on one end. Call me a hypochondriac, but I think my house has Lou Gehrig’s disease.