Meet Eileen. She’s just excited her pool is open. Eileen has always been a fixture at her neighborhood pool. This year she thought she might have to be pool-less for the summer but lo and behold the neighborhood association just announced the opening! White Claws, radio stations over the speakers, yelling at kids to stop running - she gets to have it all!!! 🙌 Somehow she knows all the lifeguards’ names within a week of the pool opening up. She also knows all the kids’ names that regularly come, but usually only half of their parents. Eileen has a visor to match every bathing suit, and has been known to clean out the pool herself with that net thingie when the lazy ass lifeguard wasn’t being helpful. She always has a romance novel in hand and has the decency to wait until 2:30 to crack open her first drink. She has a neighborhood crew that usually wanders in at some point during the day, and they one-by-one set up by Eileen, who has arrived an hour earlier to grab the best seats (with the umbrella that she likes to open after an hour and a half). She likes to yell at the lifeguards when they try to put hip hop on the radio (there are children around!) but sure loves that adult contemporary station. She is quite vocal about how the vending machines are stocked and once let her nipple slip out of her bathing suit when that new dentist from down the street was sitting nearby. Eileen’s favorite song is Cruel Summer. .
As Courtney was handed the rule pamphlet, she swore she saw the Da Vinci code. Symbols swirled around, English words became foreign and strange. She somehow now knows how to set up a VCR after reading them, but still does not quite understand how to win atMahjong.
Last week she ordered each of them one of those gadgets that shatters your car window in case of a full water immersion. She also ordered a wind up radio. You know, in case the power grid goes down. She changed the air filters in the house last month, and commented that Olive Garden is a heck of a deal if you get a family sized pan with a five dollar take-home add-on. She’s been cracking open a Bud heavy after yoga class lately, and finally decided to try out a MyPillow.
But here she sits, six years after her appointment with WIDK reporting on milk prices, beauty pageants, the occasional car theft, Alderman election scandals, and downtown green space clean up efforts. This stupid little town doesn’t deserve her. She’s meant for greatness, and she despises their perky greetings on the streets....
