Open gates.
My daughter and I go on “explores” around our apartment complex. Most of the time we just wander and look at things that catch our eye. Bugs, puddles, an occasional cat. Today we explored the pool area. It’s at the center of the complex and is surrounded by a chain-link fence. It’s kinda ugly, but that’s okay because it has to be there. It’s California law. You have to enclose pools within a fenced area to keep kids from wandering in and drowning.
I used to think this was harsh, until the three-year-old across the street was dragged purple-faced from his own pool, looking seriously like death had long since taken him home. He ended up alright, but the gate had somehow gotten left open and well, it doesn’t really matter how it happened. The gate was open. Had it been closed, and stayed closed, he wouldn’t have given us all such a scare.
Our own pool area has gone through about four major facelifts in order to keep the property managers from paying fines in this regard. They had to put a lock on the gate, but the bonehead who installed it made it a key lock on both sides. But that’s not allowed because you can actually get into a situation where someone is locked in. So they made it a knob on one side… But forgot to block the bars. All the kids just reached through to open the gate so they could then get to the Coke machine the management so perfectly placed inside to entice them. So maintenance put up some grating. But not enough. When they finally fixed that, they slapped a big sign on the gate that read, “KEEP GATE CLOSED AT ALL TIMES”.
Makes sense to me.
So today, my daughter and I come to the pool to find the gate open. This takes some doing since it has a big spring hinge built into it. When you let it go, it falls closed and locks. The problem is, they put the railing on the nearby stairs a little too close and if you push just right, you can get the gate to snap behind the railing so that it can’t close. Apparently, that wasn’t enough for some bit-head. As an added safety, they had placed a twenty pound boulder in the way. And just in case that failed, the same people went and and taped over the lock mechanism so that even if the gate were to somehow shake loose of the railing and miraculously push the rock out of the way, the mechanism wouldn’t click shut and lock them out.
Fuming, I hurled the rock into the bushes and ripped away the tape while mumbling, “I wish these painters would get a clue!” You see, they’re painting our whole complex (it has to at least look nice so they can raise our rent), and the reason that the gate has been propped open is so that they don’t have to keep asking for a key to get into the pool area to paint the pool house. That would look silly. And I might let them get away with it if not for the fact that they simply leave the gate propped open when they leave. The problem is compounded by the three-day weekend and the fact that they have had to basically repaint everything at least twice since they screwed up the colors the first time around. Our own building is going on three coats now. And for each of those coats they have had to completely seal with tape and plastic every single window on the building. They forget of course that people might want to open those windows now and again to breathe. They left the plastic on for a week at a stretch. But I digress.
So anyway, I’m a little surprised to find that about thirty seconds later, one of the painter dudes comes around the corner and wants to get into the pool area. I’m surprised because it’s Saturday. They don’t work on Saturday. Whatever. Maybe he’s just seeing how pissed-off his boss is going to be on Tuesday when he sees what a mess they have made of things. Who knows. He says, as I walk over to let him in, that he needs to use the bathroom. I frown, but there’s a special place in hell for those that refuse a person who needs to pee when there’s a perfectly good bathroom available, so I let him in and unlock the door to the men’s room.
He does his thing while the Bit and I lounge in the dusty, unused pool chairs and wonder if the landlord is ever going to heat the “heated pool”. When he comes out, I see him start to go to push the gate behind the railing. Common sense has the day off.
“You need to keep the gate closed,” I mention to him. “To keep kids from coming in here and drowning in the pool.”
He gets this blank look on his face and says, “We’re going to be painting.”
“Today?” I inquire.
“No, Tuesday. Maybe Monday.” Apparently he isn’t sure if he and his all-mexican band of painters is going to be celebrating the honorable Dr. King this year.
“Uh… That’s two days from now. What do you say we keep it closed until then, okay? It is the law and all.”
He shrugs and looks miffed. “Whatever,” he exclaims and leaves.
My daughter is with me, which is perhaps the only thing that kept me from running after the guy in order to give him a piece of my mind. It seems he’s a little short. Things like this really set me off. You know, public displays of unashamed stupidity. And the worst part is that this kind of moron isn’t going to do us all a favor and off himself, thus cleansing the global gene pool a bit. No, his actions, or rather inactions, are going to kill somebody else’s little girl or boy. And he doesn’t care.
He. just. doesn’t. care.
That sucks. People like that used to be few and far between. Now they’re everywhere. Are there really more of them around, or is it just that my own daughter has made me more observant?
Does it matter?
