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Degas’s Hecklers in Shitter

So my mother has this job now, and she has a co-worker who she says loves to hear himself talk about himself. He was late to work today, and the explanation as to why disturbed her:

He recently moved to our little slice of suburbia (although he’s a west-of-53’er, which is why it comes to no surprise that he’s a self-obsessed yuppie) and, last weekend, took his kids to a pool park we have called Rainbow Falls. It was recently rebuilt, which I guess is a detail that isn’t germane to the story, but I feel compelled to share it. I guess it accounts for the lack of any kind of detail or knowledge in the rest of the story; it’s been at least a decade since I went to the old Rainbow Falls, but I’ve never been to (and probably will never go to) the new one.

At any rate, at some point during this little trip to Rainbow Falls, he needed to take a shit. So he goes into the can, he’s by himself, he’s doing his business, and — three junior-high-aged kids rush into the bathroom. They’re making all kinds of noise, screaming, heckling, beating on his stall door. All this culminates in what I’d consider an ultimate act of humiliation: they crawled under the stall walls and doors and basically watched the man finish his shit, all the while heckling him in a Beavis & Butt-Head manner.

Why did something that happened last weekend make him late to work today? Was he trapped in the stall all week with these three depraved boys? No; after the incident, the guy immediately tracked down somebody who works there and had her file a report. But that wasn’t enough to quell his outrage and disgust; he tracked down some “big-wigs” at the Park District to not only explain the situation in more detail, but to politely tell them how to handle it. His scheduled conference call with them was this morning, which made him late to work.

He felt they should post high-school-aged attendants in all the bathrooms. He also apparently felt they should act like bouncers, and that any kids under 16 should be forced to use the “family bathroom.”*

My thought on this? Well, after the initial disbelief regarding certain aspects of the story (the most gaping hole was how he got out of the stall; they’re tiny, so I can barely imagine that many people crammed into it — another flaw of the story — and with these borderline-sociopathic attempts at intimidation, I really don’t see them just lettin gthe dude walk away without a fight), I kind of chuckled at the idea of high school students trying to ward off gangs of bizarre, creepy kids only a few years younger than themselves. Sure, they’ll stand watch, but at Park District wages, you’re gonna have a lot of kids unwilling to get involved in such bizarre situations. They might run and try to get security**, a cop, or some other kind of adult authority figure, but it’s not really a great preventative measure.

My mother, who worked at the Park District for many years, didn’t quite have the heart to tell him that they probably burst out in uncontrollable laughter as soon as he hung up the phone. She also felt like he should be pursuing this with the police rather than telling the Park District how they could prevent further incidents (especially when his idea was fairly half-assed). Kelly, one of my best friends from high school, is a part-time manager at Rainbow Falls, has told me enough disturbing stories that, combined with this incident and with the pedophilia issues, maybe having an actual security guard — not a high school student but possibly, a dude with a gun or a huge, bouncer-like fellow — wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. They apparently have some kind of security surveillance that was installed after the pederast stuff, but that doesn’t really prevent so much as it helps them catch suspects.

The whole thing seems unfeasible to me, however. How many more people would be creeped out by some armed man or gentle giant just standing there, probably in sunglasses, watching everything that happens? I’m sure it’d prevent a lot of unseemly incidents, but wouldn’t it be perceived as just one big unseemly instance itself?

With the overall disbelief still fresh in my mind, wondering why somebody would not just share the story in general but want to share it with everyone in the office on an individual basis, I turned to Kelly for answers. I wanted to know, before I put too much thought into this, if it had even happened. I know about Park District gossip, and I know Kelly herself as an almost pathological need to spread gossip to every corner of the universe. If something this odd had happened, she would know either from the rumor-mill or just from the bosses over her head telling her and other managers to do something about it.

Conveniently, right as my mom was finishing telling me the story, Kelly IM’ed me, from — even more conveniently — the scene of the crime, Rainbow Falls. I told her the entire story, and after “lol”-ing at a few key moments, she said, “Never happened. There’s no way.” Of course, she also said things like, “Around here, that would actually be a normal thing. It doesn’t even put a dent into the crazy-ass shit I’ve seen over the past 10 years.” This prompted a flood of little nuggets from stories I had, until that moment, blocked from my mind.

So from that point, I realized the story was total bullshit, which led me to the even more disconcerting question of why? Why would this guy make up a story like this, with such elaborate detail, just to explain getting to work late? What happened to “I had a flat tire”?

Did it start with a little granule of truth — maybe some obnoxious junior high kids actually were harassing him, but in a much milder way — and he just rolled with it? Because he has to be the hero of all his stories?

I don’t know. Stuff like this confounds me. Sometimes, when I have no interesting stories to write on this blog, I’m tempted to just make shit up, but that just seems so lame and half-assed. Instead, I go for weeks — possibly months — without a post.

*One of the many things I know almost nothing about, I’m told they installed a “family bathroom” in addition to the men’s and women’s rooms to circumvent reported incidents of pedophilia. Understandable.

**I don’t even know if they have security guards. It would stand to reason, what with the pedophilia, but I don’t remember them having security when I went there many years ago.

Posted by Stan on June 30, 2006 3:00 PM  | Permalink | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation | Digg It