I Can Barely Take Care of Myself (9 page)

Sarah squinted and looked toward the far end of the pool. She pointed at what appeared to be two eight-year-old girls splashing. “Look! Over there!”

“Where. Is. Their. Mo-therrr?” I asked Sarah, overemphasizing every word like a total bitch.

“I don’t know. This is ridiculous,” Sarah said. “I mean, there are ten kids’ pools here! They need this one too?!”

The waitress arrived and brought us
our drinks. “Is everything okay?” she asked. Sarah immediately masked her rage. “Everything’s great. Yeah.”
Liar.
I nodded and smiled. The waitress walked away. Our confidence came back. “Well, this is total bullshit,” I said. “I’m totally going to say something to somebody.” Just as the “somebody” I could say “something” to was completely out of reach.

Sarah and I watched the mothers of the
children who so boldly ignored
the sign.
The moms sat in their lounge chairs, slathering on their lotion. Mom no. 1 yelled toward the pool in that loud voice that moms are forced to use to be heard above screaming kids.

“Hey, Jessica, come here. Let me put some more sunblock on you! Yes. Yes, you
do
need more sunblock. It’s high noon. Jessica! Come here right now. You can get right back in!”

Why didn’t Jessica’s mom walk over to the pool and talk, in a normal voice, to her child, who shouldn’t even have been in the adult pool to begin with? How would I know? I’ve never had a kid. I don’t understand why it’s fun to spend a vacation screaming into the ears of your innocent children on a warm Maui afternoon—especially when you end up screaming into the ear of an innocent childfree woman
who is just trying to pretend to read her
InStyle
magazine’s greatest haircuts edition as she secretly eavesdrops on other cabana conversations.

Then Mom no. 2 yelled to her daughter, who was even farther away than little Jessica. “Ashley, do you want me to get you one of those rubber tubes? Which one do you want? Huh?! Which one?! No,
which one
? The inner tube that you sit in and not the foam
roller? Okay. Okay.”

Ashley’s mom walked past Sarah and me
on her way to the kids’ pool to rent a toy for her kid, to bring back for her to play with in the forbidden adult pool.

As she passed us, I said loudly, “It’s not very quiet here today. These cabanas were expensive. It would be nice to have some quiet.”

In her best loud-on-purpose voice, Sarah said, “I know. This is the adult pool,
right? Kids aren’t allowed?”

That was the extent of our confrontation with Ashley’s mom—a hopefully-she-heard-us level of passive-aggressive commentary. She returned with an inner tube and Jessica and Ashley climbed in, got comfortable, and floated around in the adult pool, which continued to be populated with nonadults. I felt like I was at a strip club with my family—these things just don’t
go together.

After a lunchtime margarita, we got a little more confident. Before she could walk away, Sarah said to our waitress, “Um, so, kids aren’t allowed in this pool, right? This is the adult pool?”

The waitress agreed. “Yes. This is the adult pool.”

Sarah, in her best yeah-I-know-I’m-being-a-C-word voice, asked, “Sooooo, what’s that?” pointing at our new nemeses Jessica and Ashley.

The waitress turned and noticed the girls. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t know.”

I added, “And I think those boys in the hot tub are definitely under eighteen.” I immediately felt bad for tattling on anyone so I made a joke. “I mean, I’m so bad with guessing ages. They could be thirty for all I know and just really skinny.”

The waitress smiled and said, “Well, yeah. This is the adult pool.” And with
that she turned on her heel to leave.

I summoned all of my courage. “Oh, ma’am? Um, can you come back for a second? Um, is there someone we can talk to about this? I mean, they’re not doing anything wrong, but it is the adult pool and we don’t care if they’re here in general but there is a sign that says no one under eighteen can be here. I mean, it’s not my rule. It’s yours.”

The waitress said,
“I’ll get a manager.”

As she walked away, Sarah high-fived me. “Best passive-aggressive comment of all time. ‘It’s not my rule. It’s yours.’ Yes!”

I started to get excited because I noticed a young couple sitting on the edge of the pool, listening to our conversation. I assumed that they also wanted to go into the pool but couldn’t because of Ashley, Jessica, and the rest of the Inner Tube Gang.
I made eye contact with them as I said to Sarah, “I mean, at least the manager is on the way, because we have to say
something.
These kids shouldn’t be in the adult pool!” I think I expected the young couple to stand up and applaud like congresspeople approving my presidential declaration about the state of the adult pool. They looked away from me and started whispering and giggling in each other’s
ears. I wanted to yell at them, “Oh, fine. Make fun of me. But I’m fighting for all of our rights! Even if you honeymooners change your mind and have kids later in life—right now this is our time by the Hibiscus Pool!”

A manager who looked like he was too young to be allowed in the adult pool himself approached us. He said, “What’s going on? Are the kids bothering you guys?”

“Well, no . . .
 ,” Sarah said. “Not exactly.”

“They’re really well behaved,” I said, trying to sound very maternal. “But it’s just that this is the adult pool and technically they shouldn’t be here. We paid extra money for these cabanas in the quiet area and it’s not very quiet.”

A toddler ran by with her wet feet slapping against the concrete. One slip and her head would split open like a dropped coconut.
I gripped my lounge chair, feeling helpless, and blurted out, “Oh my God. Be careful. Be careful, honey.” I turned to the teenage manager. “See?” I pleaded. “I can’t handle this.”

He said, “Okay. I’ll talk to someone about it,” and scurried away, passing the hot tub full of leering boys without saying a word.

Our cabana quickly became Child Watch Headquarters. Sarah and I grabbed our laptops
and took advantage of the free WiFi connection. We got to work. I took to Twitter and started tweeting to the Grand Wailea hotel, asking them, “What’s your policy on kids who
crash the adult pool? We have a situation here.” Sarah got the general manager’s information off the Grand Wailea website. She picked up her BlackBerry, made a call, and left a very stern message with the general manager’s
assistant.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said that he’d call me back later today. She wouldn’t take down my cell phone number. She said he could just call me back in the room.”

The general manager would return a customer’s complaint call to her room? Who sits in her room in the middle of the day when she’s on vacation in sunny Maui? You know who
should
be sitting in their room in the middle
of the day—parents and their toddlers. Those kids need a nap.

I’d had enough bullshit. I was going to take a bullet for my partner in Child Watch crime. “You wait here, Sarah. I’m going in and there’s no need for you to see this.” I put on my sandals and angrily flip-flopped off toward the check-in desk to confront the person who had handed me two plush towels that morning.

The towel girl was
suspiciously nice and she said that she’d call security for me. Okay. Now we were getting somewhere.
Security.
I went back to the cabana and Sarah and I watched and waited for security. I was ready for plastic handcuffs to be slapped on some toddlers and their rule-breaking moms. While we were waiting we spotted a heavy preteen girl whose boobs had not grown as round as her thighs and stomach
just yet. She seemed awkward and unhappy. She held her tired-looking mom’s hand as they walked around the adults-only pool, looking for lounge chairs. Sarah and I shared a look.

“She can stay,” I said.

“Yeah,” Sarah agreed. “She’d probably get bullied by some assholes at the kids’ pool. Who knows what she may have already been through.”

“Yeah,” I said, “she’s obviously got some weird enmeshment
shit going on with her mom too. They can’t be apart and this girl seems like an old soul.”

Just then a towering, broad-shouldered black man in uniform rounded the corner. Here he was.
Security.
Tiny heads are gonna roll. Then the towering, broad-shouldered black man in uniform walked right by the boys in the hot tub, strolled past the preteen girls in the pool, and darted around the toddlers
running on the pool’s edge. We watched him walk off into the bright sun back toward the hotel. Sarah was speechless, so I can’t really capture her reaction in print. It was a series of guttural sounds and wild hand gestures, like someone trying to make a
w
sound for the first time. “Don’t worry, partner,” I told her. “I’m going back out there.”

I got up and ran after the security guard, this
time barefoot, hopping and saying, “Ouch, hot, ouch,” with every step. “Hey, security guy. What
was
that out there? You’re just going to walk by?” He said, “I think they got the message.” “What message? That security means nothing? That if they keep wading in the adult pool, security might . . . walk by again? Ooooh, scary. You have to actually
say
something to the kids, like, ‘Hi, you kids don’t
look like you’re old enough to be here. You must leave this pool if you don’t get your period yet or have never had a wet dream.’ ”

He followed me back to the adult pool and talked to the kids and their parents. I went back to Child Watch Headquarters and let Sarah know that it had all been taken care of. “Uh, then what’s that?” Sarah asked. I looked and just as
Security
was walking away, the
kids were getting back into the pool. Sarah and I retired from our beat that afternoon and ordered four more margaritas—well, we ordered six, but the waitress gave us a dirty look and said, “My tray only holds four.” And in a not-so-subtle way she said, “Four is a good limit. Dontcha think, girls?”

I SAT DEFEATED in Child Watch Headquarters, watching the kids finally get out of the pool as the
sun started to go behind the clouds. I hadn’t yelled. I hadn’t said anything mean to the kids or about the kids to their parents. But I felt like a monster. How come I felt so
guilty about wanting the rules to be enforced so that I could enjoy our vacation the way I paid for it?

It was the hotel’s rule that there was a separate pool for adults. Why can’t the two pools coexist without the generations
crossing? It wouldn’t dawn on me to go act like an adult in the kids’ pool. I wouldn’t jump in the shallow end with a drink in my hand and start talking loudly to Sarah in front of a toddler about the best way to prevent a urinary tract infection after sex.

It’s so taboo to say that you don’t really enjoy the company of children. May I point out that the adults who brought their kids to the adult
pool obviously did so because
they
did not want to be around only other children? Do they get a free pass because they procreated? I see parents all the time who get a kick out of saying, “I only like
my
kids. I don’t like other kids.” But if a single woman without children says, “I don’t like kids,” she sounds like a sociopath. I realize that one of those boys in the hot tub or girls in the pool
could be president someday. I realize that we have children’s futures in our hands and they have our futures in theirs. I acknowledge that it’s a beautiful cycle and I’ll admit that I made myself tear up just typing that sentiment. I don’t want to be made to feel like a bitch because I’m upset that now, before those kids grow up to be president, they are peeing in my pool.

Sarah and I went back
to our room and enjoyed some champagne on our balcony while we watched the sun set. We also maybe threw a pillow or two off the ledge. We also maybe threw an entire bag of Skittles, one by one, off the balcony at the people walking below (no, no children were harmed). We were well aware that throwing things off a balcony was against the rules, but we knew that the security and management team would
be too lazy to bust us unless we told on ourselves.

I GOT HOME from the vacation to find out that there was a new upstairs neighbor in my fourplex apartment building—three new
neighbors actually: a mommy, a daddy, and a toddler. My landlord made the executive decision to let a toddler live above a quiet, single woman who works from home as a writer on weekends. I long for the days when the twenty-six-year-old
drunk girl lived upstairs and faked really loud, operatic orgasms until four in the morning. At least with her, I could count on the fact that she’d pass out immediately after and she’d stay asleep until about one o’clock the next day. (And if I was in the right mood, let’s be honest, it was scintillating to listen to the noises she was making.)

I’m sitting in my home office, typing, and I can
hear him now, running up and down the length of his apartment. He sounds like he has weights in his shoes. Every once in a while he stops running, only to drop and then drop again a toy that sounds like a regulation-size bowling ball. I can hear his dad chasing him down the hallway playfully, which makes little Tony (I named him Tony) squeal with delight. Can we all admit that the sound of a kid
squealing, even if it’s with joy, sounds like squealing? I can angrily press the button on an air horn or I can press the button on an air horn with a sense of carefree fun and either way it sounds like an air horn.

I woke up at five in the morning today because that’s what time Tony wakes up—or at least it’s the time that he starts crying and screaming and then choking on the phlegm he’s built
up from crying, and then screaming because he thinks he’s going to die from choking on phlegm. Luckily, my dad taught me ingenuity. I put a fan on the floor. I turn it on low and it makes just enough of a sound to create some white noise. If I close my bedroom door, I can’t hear a thing that’s going on outside of my bedroom—which includes any smoke alarms in the hallway, my home security alarm,
or a murderer if he decides to break a window in my kitchen so he can climb through and grab those enticing knives on my counter because he forgot to bring his own weapon. If only these parents upstairs knew just how selfless I was—putting aside my own peace of mind for a little peace and quiet because I know that there’s no way I can march upstairs and tell a toddler to stop
crying about how
he doesn’t understand yet that sleeping is fucking awesome.