It'SNot What You Think

Among the less well-know casualties of teaching swimming lessons to little tykes are internal bleeding and black eyes from getting kicked in various places while teaching (what else?) kicking; severely itchy skin from sitting in a bath of chlorine for more than two hours a day; and getting sick.

The first one I haven't experienced in years, but the second two continue to plague me.

Why would you get sick from being around kids in a pool? You might ask.. It's not like in daycare where, if they don't wash their hands every five minutes, the group of preschoolers becomes a veritable incubus of viral plague. You're in chlorine. It should kill it all.
You know what? It should, but it doesn't.
On the contrary.
See, when these little kids (of whom I have over 20 on Mondays and Wednesdays and over 30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays) are swimming - doing various kicking exercises with a floatie stick to support their arms or trying desperately to swim front crawl - and come up for air, it's usually right in my face.

And what goes right in my face when they come up for air? Spit, sneezing, coughing, snot, water etc.

I know. Really gross.

There were a few specific instances last week when the kid came up for air and spit, just as I was opening my mouth to say something, and the spit went right in my mouth. Not a loogie (sp?) or anything like that. Just a full spray-blast of water and other unknowns from their mouth and into mine, complete with all the little bacteria and viral yuckies (that's a technical term) that come along with little kids.

Now you wonder why I'm sick?

Oh yeah, maybe it's also because of my schedule - working 35 hrs/week on top of school. But I prefer to blame it on the spit.

Photo courtesy of http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/

Career Bay-watch-er

Just a little update, since I can't seem to be able to pull myself away from my beloved Macbook and the NYTimes and thought I might as well do something useful in the meantime.

Tomorrow will see my first official shift guarding at the SW Pool and Community Center. I'm excited - for the work, not for the life guarding.

Lifeguarding for me is like the old, wrinkled shirt you have to wear because it's time to do laundry and you didn't plan well enough to have time to do it before you had to wear the old wrinkled shirt (or the old, non-date-worthy, haven't-seen-the-light-of-day-in-six-months underwear). We didn't plan very well, and the economy is like my overdue laundry, and lifeguarding is that old, wrinkled shirt that I have to wear because there's just nothing better lying around in this walk-in closet known as my life.

It's generally boring, hot, humid, mind-numbing work. Not like Baywatch. Nothing like Baywatch. In fact, the most exciting thing that will happen tomorrow (with any luck) will be a bloody nose from some lap swimmer getting kicked in the face by an aqua jogger lady or maybe the pH level in the pool will be too high and I'll have to go back in the labyrinthine mechanical room and flip a switch.

Still, it's not all bad.

It's a paycheck. It's sitting in my bathing suit for hours on end. It's getting to swim and workout for free anytime I want at a very nice, yuppie facility (free yoga and pilates, free cardio and weights etc). It's getting a free water bottle. It's getting an intimate look (and smell) at some little tyke's breakfast... Ok, this is going downhill fast.

Oh, and I just realized I have a math midterm this week. SH********************************T! So much for planning ahead...