The Rules

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There is always a dynamic tension in communal living. I have seen it here at Big Pink, the place I have lived longer than any other in my life. I moved to the building in 2001, so that is fourteen years. The place is a condominium, so residency is relatively stable. It is diverse, to a degree, but mostly white, and mostly older. A lot of empty-nesters with spikes of rental people. Like me these days. I thought I was going to pull chocks when I sold my unit upstairs, but the place I am in now came available at just the perfect moment.

It is as comfortable as an old shoe, and the pool is virtually at my front door.

It is perfect, and with swimming being the best exercise available to me, I think I will stay another season. Still, I think I am approaching full blown geezer-hood.

This has been a crappy summer for a bunch of reasons- all of them external. Society is changing and increasingly I feel myself like the Clint Eastwood character in “Gran Torino,” standing on my porch and shouting for the kids to Get Off My Lawn. I forget I am a renter sometime, so it technically isn’t actually my lawn, but the changing of the season comes with a subtle change in the generations.

When I got here I was probably a little younger than the median age, and possibly presented as a bit of a flamboyant rebel. I know Ludmilla, Big Pink’s Zampolite, thought so, and corrected my behavior out at the pool early on. I was problematic- as a renter, I was not to be trusted. Clearly i and had no respect for The Rules, since some where unwritten, and hence unknown.

My first encounter with her was not pleasant. I think I had a radio with me one day and was chastised for not having earphones to mute the sound. I wasn’t playing it loudly, or disruptively, but those were The Rules. Over time we became pretty good friends particularly after I actually showed some commitment to the Building by sequentially purchasing a couple units. But she got married and is going to move out when her husband retires next year, and at Willow, Old Jim and Chanteuse Mary are going to flee the city. Van Dyke and his bride are heading out as well, bound for a 55+ community in Florida. I had not considered anything like that- interesting concept, those communities. You move in the the single-level ranch with the attached garage, and progress to the assisted living to the full care to the crematorium out back. Having been through the process with the folks a few years ago, I am comfortable with how it works. I just had not completely wrapped my brain around the act that it was happening to me, too.

The problems started the second weekend the pool was open. A large group of people arrived and set up a buffet lunch, complete with serving dishes and glass bottles of beer and wine. It was quite a production number, set up near the designated smoking area at the north end of the pool. It was a clear violation of the rules. It made me feel uncomfortable, but since everyone was still getting to know one another at the beginning of the season, I was reluctant to approach them directly. Someone finally told them them food and particularly glass containers were not permitted in the enclosure, but the number of guests and the air of resentment made things kind of testy around the pool deck. I ignored it and listened to my book on tape.

I noted similar conduct by different groups over the next few weekends, since my unit faces the fence and the pool table where the wine and beer bottles showed up. I don’t mind people having a good time, but I am on that pool deck every day and a broken wine or beer bottle means something real to me about slashing my feet or those of the kids who play there. Plastic ups or metal thermos jugs would not have raised my hackles in the slightest. Still, the food buffet appears to be incompatible with the rules as posted. There were exceptions back when the Board sponsored the annual pool party, but those days are long gone along with the Big Pink budget surplus.

The polish life-guards, Matt and Pavel, have settled in nicely and we appeared to be getting back to our usual sultry tranquility. At least until yesterday.

At happy Hour time, I walked in to the Willow, and was the first one there. Jim was taking care of a Realtor@ who was showing his condo. I sipped my first drink and looked at my smart phone to kill some time until the regulars showed up. There was a new text on the phone, and my eyes widened. Doc had sent me this note:

“You let me down, Buddy. I was swimming my laps and four young women kept jumping in my lane. I asked them twice to keep to one side of the pool, and after the second time the oldest one told me to “go F**k myself. She was a guest, the pool was for everyone and they could do what they wanted.”” Wish you had been there.”

I texted her right back. I had an encounter with the same young women, who ranged from young teen to maybe eighteen or nineteen, based on the tattoo on the shoulder. No real adults were with them, and I didn’t recognize them.

My exercise routine is to tread water vigorously for at least an hour while I listen to a book tape to kill the boredom. Things got rapidly less boring as the young women threw themselves into vigorous activity. They were a curious bunch. One of the older ones had inflatable floaties on her upper arms. The apparent youngest one sat quietly at a table, watching. The other three threw themselves with abandon into the pool, jumping into the lane where my pal the Tibetan lady was swimming her laps. They disrupted that for a while, and then swam over to my side of the pool where I was determinedly trying to stay above the waves caused by the leaping girls. They clambered up the ladder, and then lined up three abreast and did cannonball jumps into the water in front of me.

I am a strong swimmer, but no one wants to have someone jump on you unawares, so I had to focus on what they were doing. I looked up at the clock, noting that I had only twelve minutes to go on the work-out and it probably wasn’t worth taking my waterproof earbuds out and asking them to give me a break for just a couple minutes. The sinking of the Lusitania was the subject of my book on tape, and it suddenly had an immediacy that it had not prior to the arrival of the young women.

This is undoubtedly a generational thing. Not a Millennial vs Baby Boomer thing, or not exactly. There is a Millennial in this someplace, the one responsible for bringing the Gen Z’ers.

I left Willow about the usual time, but Doc’s message still had me frosted. Normally, I make sure that my computer is turned off when I get back from Willow, to prevent inadvertently telling people what I really think. But I made an exception last night and drafted a histrionic note to the Community Manager that the cussing out of a distinguished resident-owner for simply requesting to share her own pool was out of control and verging on anarchy.

I mashed the button on “send” and off it went. Then I considered my next steps. Perhaps I could go out on the patio and tell someone to get off my lawn?

That whole idea of a 55+ community is sounding better and better.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

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