I totally showed up at the public pool this morning and ripped my swim trunks on the turnstile getting in, because I was showing off for my friend Hammond and pretending to do a kind of airborne somersault over the turnstile, and I made the mistake of trying to rest my weight on the metal bar for a second.
And it totally didn't work out right, because the turnstile turned and didn't support my weight at all, so I kind of fell / lurched / tumbled forward and cracked the back of my head and the top of my back right on the floor and ripped my trunks on this rusty little jagged spot on the side of the turnstile bar.
So now I was all humiliated and scraped up and crying HARD and scared, and my friend Hammond just sailed through whistling that brainless Sting song he always whistles and pretended he didn't know me at all, and started hanging around these kids he barely even knows all day who are WAY cooler than we are (I don't even know why they let Hammond hang out with them) and ignoring me COMPLETELY because I had a bandage on my upper back that had a blood stain on it and I was "benched" all day and forbidden from swimming, which was partly a punishment for my ill-advised show-off somersault stunt and partly out of genuine concern for my health and the sanitation of the pool waters since my mom wasn't coming back to pick up Hammond and me for another two and a half hours.
So I just sat there pathetically on my bench, watching Hammond look all cool and have fun learning tricks off the high dive with his new cool gang (which included a GIRL I have a huge crush on -- Nancy Kightlinger -- who's SUPER-cute and a member of the Pint-Size Panthers Cheering Squadron). Nancy has spurned my love many times before, crushing my hopes mercilessly as often as in five or ten minute increments since I ride her same bus every day.
Anyhow Nancy and these three guys -- Tim, Rodney, and Francis -- were hanging out with Traitor Hammond (that's how I came to think of him) all day like they were the world's best, oldest friends, while I cried and got sun burned and suffered all day on my punishment / recovery bench.
There were three consolations though.
1) Tim, Rodney, and Francis totally wound up de-pantsing Hammond and made him cry and run naked into the locker room. That was great. Nancy thought Hammond was a total scrub-wad after that. You know she did.
2) This new lifeguard, Cherise (I'm not sure that's how you spell it), totally took pity on me and brought me a towel to cover the parts of me that my swimsuit rip kept exposing and kept checking on my bandages and one time even BROUGHT ME AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH, which I normally hate those since the paper wrapping always gives me the creeps somehow, but I ate the damned thing anyway, out of love and gratitude for Cherise's attentions toward me in my time of need. I asked Cherise why lifeguards always wear two swimsuits and she had no answer. So she's no Einstein, clearly, but my love remains pure. And I didn't even badger Cherise too badly -- only once every 15 minutes or so -- since I read this new book about playing it cool with "chicks." I did show her the trick I can do with my navel though, since I felt quite close to her.
3) Even AFTER his public de-pantsing humiliation, Hammond calmly expressed his love for Nancy Kightlinger as they waited in line for the high-dive, and clearly overstepped his bounds, since Nancy immediately told her goon squad -- Tim, Rodney, and Francis -- and they made fun of Hammond so badly (calling him "The De-Pantsed One") that they reduced his turncoat ass to tears yet again and cruelly mocked his love for the rest of the day. So Hammond wound up crying (well, SNIFFLING really bad and PRETENDING not to cry) next to me on my punishment / recovery bench. So by the time Mom showed up to pick us up, we had both been stripped of all dignity and honor and were starting at an equal playing field again -- dead bottom -- so we kind of patched things up and are friends again. I told Hammond not to feel too bad, since I totally would have ditched him too if the situation were reversed. The only thing I DIDN'T tell Hammond was that I would have led Nancy and my three new brutish male friends over to the recovery / punishment bench to throw corn-dogs and ketchup at him to mock him endlessly, and probably nicknamed him something cruel like "The Turnstile Idiot" to boot.
