ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 1, 1996 TAG: 9608010014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
All-seeing and omnipotent - he's the prince of the pool
You've just blown all your vacation for the year. And, well, Hurricane Bertha wasn't exactly your idea of Fun at the Beach.
No, really, you like plunking down $600 for two days of storm clouds, followed by evacuation traffic jams, followed by the conspiratorial arrival of both your Visa and your car insurance bills on the same day.
My husband and I once fled the island of Ocracoke when a Northeaster blew up, the temperature plunged to the 40s and the ``quaint cottage'' we were staying in was so flimsy that the curtains blew - with the windows closed.
Naturally, the next day when we called to tell the rental company where we'd left the key, it was a beautiful, sunny 75 degrees on the Outer Banks.
And back in Roanoke? High 80s and even higher humidity. Brown splotches of grass in the lawn, which nonetheless needed mowing, and rotting tomatoes.
My friend Karen calls this time of year ``high summer.'' Others refer to it as the ``summer doldrums.''
You've done two-thirds of three different home-improvement projects, and you've run out of the time, energy - and money - to finish a single one. The kids are whining their perennial whine: ``I'm so boooorred!''
Meanwhile at work, everyone else is off having their vacations of a lifetime, so you're left to pick up the slack.
Through it all, there's this nagging feeling that somehow you're supposed to be having a great time. It's been drilled into you ever since your first last day of school, in kindergarten.
Summer vacation's like Christmas, with all its over-ratedness and expectations - only you don't even get presents. And the worst part of all is: When you you grow up, THEY TAKE IT AWAY FROM YOU!
Which is what took me, for nostalgia's sake, to the ladder under the umbrella of the lifeguard chair beside the pool at Fallon Park.
To John Obenshain, who felt my pain.
He understood my quest to relive all the hours I spent as a teen-ager twirling the whistle, applying that strange white nose goo and shouting ``No sex in the pool!'' to gangly, mismatched pubescents.
A 23-year-old University of Virginia graduate with a degree in religious studies, Obenshain has worked at the pool - first as a ticket-taker, then as a lifeguard and now as the manager - for eight years. He's managed to delay the onset of getting ``a real job'' for over a year now, and I praise him for it.
He concedes, however, his queasiness over needing to wear a hat this summer. ``I'm starting to thin up top, and my scalp gets burnt,'' he says.
Still, ask any chlorine-drenched, raisin-skinned 12-year-old on the block what they wanna be when they grow up, and the answer's the same: An automobile owner, followed by a lifeguard.
The quintessential summer gig, it features a killer tan ... the babes/dudes checking you out ... the occasional thong/Speedo sighting ... and an endless array of amusing anecdotes, such as:
The dreamy-eyed middle-schooler who dog-paddled up to Obenshain, gazed longingly at him and said: ``Sir, can you teach me the butterfly?''
The kids who think you can't see them breaking rules out of the sides of your sunglasses. (A tip: Lifeguards have impeccable peripheral vision; mirrored sunglasses were invented to throw off wily rule-breakers.)
The witnessing of summer trends. Nose-Kote is out; ditto for slathering yourself with baby oil dotted with iodine, to enhance the tan. Lifeguards these days use SPF-30, and when they're off-duty, SPF-100 (that's indoors, a channel-changer in hand).
As for the kids, the oversized-baggy-shorts look known as ``the sag'' is still in, much to Obenshain's chagrin. ``I don't like seeing their butts - that's where I draw the line,'' he says. He likes to embarrass the over-the-edge saggers by announcing their names over the loudspeaker: ``Hey Johnny, pull up your pants!''
Getting to hear the wacky things precocious kids say, such as the one who complained about the lifeguards being late to their shift: ``They're three minutes late. They should be more prompt, like the post office.''
And, lest I leave out the least-glamorous requirement of lifeguarding , Obenshain sums it up in a single word: ``Poop.''
Where?
``Everywhere,'' he says. ``The bathroom floor, the deck, the pool ...''
Obenshain and his buddy, assistant manager Derek Elmore, have a rule of thumb about waste removal: ``Whoever does this first,'' Elmore says, touching his sunscreened nose, ``has to clean it up.''
Come high summer, that's enough to make me thankful for my desk job.
Well, almost.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: ROBERT LUNSFORD/Staff. color.by CNB