The Bobby Pin Challenge

On Thursday, it rained in the morning, resulting in an almost empty pool. I was a rover, so basically I was supposed to wander around helping any lifeguard who needed help with patrons. But there were none, so I created the Bobby Pin Challenge. The challenge was to pick up as many bobby pins off the floor as possible. I won, with a stunning 33 and a half bobby pins (I know, everyone has a problem with "half," but this literally was half a bobby pin.).

But this got me thinking. People can get fined for littering, but women lose bobby pins all the time without any punishment. This is because it is part of their biological makeup. Cats spit up fur balls, but but women are much more like dogs in this particular aspect. Women shed bobby pins. You can't hate them for it; it's just their nature.

However, it's important to consider the bobby pin issue when making choices in girls. It can make a huge difference in the bobby pin budget, not to mention the number you'll have to pick up. The shorter haired breeds shed less. Keep this in mind when you're finding the girl for you.

I'm sure this post will draw criticism from girls everywhere, but I was just telling it how it is. I'm sure you could find similar information on Wikipedia. However, I'll end up a martyr for this post. You'll find me on the pool deck, bobby pins stabbed into me in every direction. Pick 'em up, and you might be the new record holder of the bobby pin challenge.

Jerk With A Cause

Yesterday, at the Scera Pool, I got my first save. I had to put the little boy into a special hold called the "head chin splint" to keep him from moving his head. "I'm fine," he protested, despite having come off the diving board and landing on his chin and then flipping back into the water. I tried to calm him and explain what I was doing. He tried to move his head, repeating, "I'm fine," as if I couldn't hear him. As he thrashed, trying to escape, I desperately tried to keep him under control, and keep him from doing irreparable damage to his spine. We had just moved him onto a backboard when the supervisor, who is an EMT, released him. The kid looked at me like I was some sort of jerk, stopping his fun for something as small as possible paralysis.

This has really made me question my role as a lifeguard. I've come to realize that my job as a lifeguard calls not for a rebel without a cause, but for a "jerk with a cause." I enforce irrational rules all day, just to make people hate me. As an example of what a spoilsport jerk I am and the irrational rules, I tell people not to dive into two feet of water.

People hate it when I tell them that they can't do flips into the shallow pool. Basically, they want to be safe, but not protected. It makes no sense, but the "spirit of customer service" is alive in our staff. Basically, that means we let the old people do whatever they want. Old people get MAD when they don't get their way. I learned that when we tried to close the Rec Center Pool on time. We close five minutes early to give them five minutes to use the locker rooms (actually, it's just so they get out of the locker rooms faster, cause it takes FOREVER to get them out). Some old lady got REALLY mad at me cause she had FIVE MORE MINUTES!!! (As if she could do anything much in that time) Anyways, after talking to her, the time was up, and it was too late for her to get in anyways. I felt like a jerk with a cause.

Youth Conference At The Reef

This last weekend, the Youth in my ward went to Capitol Reef for Youth Conference. Minus the twelve and thirteen year olds, of course, who are excluded from every activity that could be called "The For Real Deal" on the basis of their age, a classic textbook case of age-ism. Anyways, Capitol Reef is an area that looks like most other places in Utah except for the fact that it has signs telling you not to litter or destroy the wildlife. Which is basically the concept of a Park in Utah.

I'd just like to clarify though, that Capitol Reef is nothing like the Great Barrier Reef. I know of someone who thought that, and I'd just like to console her by saying I thought that too. When I was three.

Signs
This isn't a section about freaky aliens that were wussy. This is, as most readers will understand, a section about the various stupid signs that I saw there. And those "most readers" will also be disappointed to know that there was only one. But it makes up for it in sheer quality. There was a city called Fruita. Established in 1895. Obviously, San Francisco got all the publicity, while this little enclave of... alternatively oriented people... lived a quiet life until the federal government made them a PARK. And they could no longer PARK it there.

Everybody Chris Chun Tonight!
Chris Chun is the next Chuck Norris slash Jet Li slash Jackie Chan. Slash Sean Connery. This kid is slick. He could kill you without thinking, because everyone in his family is raised from birth to become a killing machine. We were afraid to wake him up, because he might accidentally karate chop one of us while he was still groggy from sleep. In fact, we were kind of afraid to be in the same tent. I was on the opposite side, but I still figured that it would take only a couple seconds for him to blow through Grant, Kyler and Matt. And I would be next.

But the security benefits outweighed the death possibility. I didn't want to be kept up all night as incompetent little boys tried repeatedly to collapse our tent. This time, with Chris Chun in the tent, there was no such problem. Mostly because if they had, a karate chop stance hand would tear through the tent walls, searching for flesh to tear, and bones to break.

By the way, Kyler, when I told my dad about Chris Chun, he immediately began singing "Everybody Chris Chun tonight." Obviously, that's the way the song really has to be.

Sunrise Hike Beats Twilight Book (Take That, Girls)
This section actually has nothing to do with that Twilight book, which I know nothing about, except the girls in our car were trying to explain to me that the vampires glow when they're outside in the day. Actually, we went on a hike to see the sun rise. It was highly overrated. Kyler and I actually ended up admiring the manmade lakes that we saw more than the sunrise, mostly because you can't really look at a sunrise if you value your sight.

What was really amazing was that Chris Chun ran the hike. In flip flops. It was incredible. He's insane. But the problem was he ran past the point where we were looking at the sunrise. He's just a little too excited and does more work than he has to.

BS Go Fish
No camp is complete without card games at night. After we got through playing several games of Scum, we decided to play Go Fish. I suggested that we could lie, and the other person could call BS like in the game BS. Well, it sounded like a great game, and all the rules were set out, so we started. Grant asked for my queens and I had none. He called BS, and I started to show him my cards. It was at that point that I realized that the game wouldn't work. The game of BS Go Fish degenerated from there until it became regular Go Fish. At least we were playing a game though. The girls were all sleeping outside to avoid the bugs in their tents. Very intuitive.

Real Men Of Courage- Cliff Jumping
This particular Real Men Of Courage Award actually goes to a woman. Yes, the winner of the award was Sister Winn, who jumped off the cliff into the waterhole. The runner up was Terri, who is a professional, and made the biggest splashes ever, despite the fact that she was smaller than most of the guys who went off of it. As is basically the usual pattern with these, I was the Not So Real Man Of Courage who didn't do it, despite the fact that Jasmine was getting even more worked up about me not jumping off than she was about me not reading Twilight. I watched as Sister Winn, who is older than I am, and had already had her "Crazy Teenager" stage of life jumped off the cliff and fell. She was probably making a defiant gesture, and yelling a war cry as she went down. Personally, I think she may stolen my "Crazy Teenager" stage. Valeri, please steal it back for me. And I'll never make another Wonder Woman joke.

The End
I realize that the people who went would really want me to summarize the ride home and Kadan, Kyler, and Uncle Jed's converstation, but I really can't. You'd have to be there to understand. And I'm sure Kyler will write a "Stomach Of An Ox" sequel of his victory over Alyssa, so I'll refrain from stealing his thunder.