The Biggest Swimming Pool in the World

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Version française

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Superlatives are words used to qualify the absolute top or bottom in quality or quantity. How we enjoy talking about the wealthiest man in the world, the thinnest tablet or the most crooked political leader!

I guess these words were invented to make us forget how common our ordinary lives can be.

As I was discussing superlatives with colleagues, it made me think of something that happened while I was still married.

My wife was born to drive a car. She just loved to take to the road. She used any excuse to jump into the car and travel aimlessly looking for something new to see.

On a nice sunny Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take a ride in the countryside.

My wife was at the wheel. Fields, groves and cattle were going by the left and right of the car. I was daydreaming, thinking how great life was and how wonderful it was to be alive.

We came to a village famous for its cheese curds factory and decided to stop and sample the local delicacy.

Cheese curds were invented in Canada in the early 1960s by dairy farmers trying to bypass quota regulations. Easy to make, this fat, salty, slightly processed cheddar cheese quickly became popular and gave birth to the infamous “poutine,” a meal made of cheese and french fries topped with hot gravy.

We bought our cheese and as my wife was admiring the quaint shop, I read a story in the local newspaper about one of the area attractions, “the biggest natural swimming pool in the world.”

As soon as I mentioned it to my wife, she wanted to see it since it was only a few miles away.

We found the “swimming pool” at the end of an unnamed dirt road. The pool was made of three communicating stone basins at the foot of a large rock where a trickle of cold water was flowing from a spring. The bottom of each basin had been painted aquamarine to give the impression of an artificial swimming pool. All in all, the lagoon was much smaller in size than an olympic swimming pool.

It had been a hot summer with less than average rainfall. The stream was not a bubbly jet of water, just a slow dribble. The smallest basin was empty and the deepest contained nothing more than three feet of sticky water, green with algae proliferating under the warm sun.

This did not seem to bother the numerous children who were noisily splashing about in the water while their parents, slumped into lounging chairs around the pool, distractedly kept an eye on their progeny.

I told my wife this seemed to be the perfect place to catch a dermatosis that would make these poor kids’ skin tougher than the hide of Big Joe, the largest alligator of Florida that we had seen near Fort Myers.

With more than one million American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in the world this species is far from being endangered as it haunts the southeastern United States. The word “alligator” is derived from el lagarto (the lizard), the name given to the reptile by the first Spanish explorers.

“You always see the bad side of things! Look at how much fun they’re having!” she said smiling and waving at the children.

At that moment, a man with a worn-out Elvis Presley T-shirt and sporting a dirty pair of khaki shorts with a dangerously open fly came to meet us.

— Welcome to our little paradise on Earth! Are you looking for a place to park your camping trailer?

— Erm... No, we just came to see the biggest swimming pool in the world, I said before being interrupted by my wife.

— Oh! There’s a campground? Can we see it?

— Yes, behind those trees, answered the man pointing towards a thinly-wooded area. I can give you a tour if you want.

— Oh! That would be delightful! Shall we go my darling? said my wife to me as she took the arm of our improvised guide.

Against my will I followed them through an underbrush planted with birch and aspen trees.

A lacing road was forming a loop of the campground. Trailers were parked along the road close to each other, most of them permanently. Some seemed to have been there for decades.

At the centre of the loop, a large porcelain urinal decorated with lights and plastic flowers was acting as a grotto for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The saint was standing in this makeshift shrine with her open arms, looking discouraged as if she declined any responsibility for the compound she found herself in.

Our guide was explaining the intricacies of camping to my wife as she obediently listened and asked questions from time to time. The man was so happy to have found an audience that he was rocking on his heels, a nervous tick that, to my dismay, was causing the broken fly of his shorts to open even more.

He then invited us for coffee in his trailer. My wife accepted although I was not keen on the invitation and we walked towards the fellow’s mobile home.

The trailer looked like our guide: common and unkempt. As the guy started to fight to open the jammed door, the broken fly zipper of his shorts gaped even more and, to my disgust, I saw “Elvis” leaving the building.

I had had enough. I took my wife by the arm, thanked our host and, pretending we had a long ride home we left this place where I had seen everything I wished I had never seen.

Swimming pools have been popular since antiquity, the oldest one was found in Sindh, Pakistan. In England, public swimming pools appeared in the mid-19th century. However, nobody has ever boasted of having the emptiest swimming pool in the world.

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Hospital Diaries VII: The Sweet-Smelling Ward

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Version française

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next. 

Paralysis is a terrible impediment to autonomy. Not only are you not able to move but also you cannot get dressed, wash or go to the bathroom by yourself.

In the Gurney Hall I had to let go of my shirt and pants and I felt humiliated wearing nothing but briefs under the ridiculous patient smock with the wide opening in the back.

You see, clothes not only serve to keep you warm and decent, they also symbolize your social status. In a hospital this hierarchy is quite obvious: doctors wear white smocks and a tie, nurses and orderlies wear pastel-coloured scrubs, and patients lie half-naked at the bottom of the social ladder.

The social ladder is nowhere ever more present than in a fire brigade. Here a firefighter is climbing the social ladder in an attempt to become lead firefighter, a dangerous position with more responsibilities. Exactly why is a mystery to me.

I was sharing my embarrassment with my friend Lucide as she was pushing me in my wheelchair back to my room at the Emergency Overflow.

“You know, when you’re in a hospital, you have to give up your pride,” she said.

Unfortunately, my vanity prevented me from appreciating her wisdom.

The next day, I squirmed for an hour in my stretcher, finally managing to put on a pair of jeans. I could not button them because of my swollen and numb hands but I did zip them up.

As I was basking in this accomplishment, I looked up and saw a tall blonde woman who had been observing me for awhile, standing at the foot of my gurney.

Although she was smartly dressed and not wearing a white smock, I knew she was a doctor simply because she appeared out of nowhere like all the other doctors who came to see me in the hospital.

“Good morning sir. I am Doctor Sveta Tiplova,” she said with a strong Russian accent. “How are you feeling today?”

“Quite well thank you. Are you a neurologist?”

“No, I’m a physiatrist and I’m here to assess your condition.”

I thought I heard “psychiatrist” and for a moment I had a vision of the Soviet Gulag and the snowy Siberian steppes. I feared this new doctor was sent by the “Seagull,” the doctor who thought I was faking my illness, as a first step to having me committed.

Seeing my distress, Doctor Tiplova explained that she was a specialist of the musculoskeletal system. She then proceeded to thoroughly examine my hands, my arms, my shoulders, my neck and my knees.

Physiatry, a medical discipline that became popular during WWII, is about restoring the bones and muscles connexion after an injury otherwise than through a silly Bible camp song.

She seemed puzzled but I could see that she was carefully considering my ailment. She finally said:

“Listen, for what it’s worth I am going to submit your case to the Internal Medicine Department. They might be able to recommend some tests to establish a proper diagnosis.”

After she left I realized that medical science was as much in the dark about the nature of my illness as I was, although it did not have to cope with the pain and paralysis.

For the time being however, Doctor Tiplova’s visit had an instant benefit for me. For her examination, an orderly had moved me to my wheelchair and I was no longer lying down on my stretcher.

I had not been to the bathroom since I arrived at the hospital several days before. My friend Lucide had brought me prunes when she came to visit and I was beginning to feel their effect on my bowels.

Plums (prunus domestica) were introduced to the western world during the Crusades and offered as a perk to crusaders (whence the expression “plum reward”) who left their family and possessions behind to massacre Moors in the Holy Land. Once dried, they are called prunes and can be preserved for a long time. Their laxative properties are legend.

I rolled my wheelchair to the toilet, put the brakes on and painstakingly lifted myself up by leaning on the chair’s armrests. With great effort I advanced the three steps to the bowl and collapsed on its seat.

At once my intestines began to void. Oh! The joy I felt when I realized that at least this part of my body was fully functional! My hands, my arms, my legs and my neck may have given up on me but at this time I swear I was in Paradise!

However, after I was done and had wiped away the traces of my deed I was faced with another challenge. How was I to get up from the toilet? There were holding bars on the wall but my arms did not have the strength to lift me up.

I realized I would have to ask an orderly to help me get up from this awkward position.

There was a chain on the wall with a sign that said “EMERGENCY” in red letters. Humbly I pulled on it and after ten minutes an orderly showed up.

“Oh! Poor sir! You shouldn’t have tried to go to the bathroom by yourself! We could have brought you a commode chair!”

Commode chairs, such as this padded specimen, were popular in the 18 and 19 centuries before the advent of sewers. To each his own, using a commode chair is not a pleasant experience yet it is better than relieving yourself in a diaper.

He tried to pull me up but the bathroom was too narrow. He left to get another orderly and together they managed to make me stand up. The second orderly pulled up my trousers, buttoned them and zipped them up.

Nothing can wound your pride as much as having several people witnessing the embarrassing situation you are in.

As a consolation, I thought of Dante’s Divine Comedy where the author, while travelling through Hell, met an acquaintance who had been condemned to swim for eternity in a sea of excrements because of his pride.

Dante Alighieri is the Italian poet who established the Tuscan dialect as the standard Italian language. The Divine Comedy recalls his climbing the social ladder through the nine circles of Hell, the nine rings of Purgatory and the nine celestial bodies of Paradise. The journey is the reward indeed. Illustration by Gustave Doré, Public Domain

Once I was sitting in my wheelchair, I asked if I could go outside to have a smoke.

“That will not be possible sir,” said the orderly. “We have to put you back on your gurney. We found a permanent room for you in another ward and somebody will take you there shortly.”

As the gurney attendant was rolling my stretcher towards the elevator I was rejoicing because I believed that being transferred to a permanent room meant I was now a legitimate patient. Doctors would soon find the nature of my ailment, prescribe the appropriate treatment and I could go back home.

Alas! When the attendant pushed open the doors of the general medicine ward where I was to stay for the next several weeks a poignant stench of excrements assailed my nostrils.

I thought I was being taken to Dante’s first circle of Hell to be punished for my pride.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries VIII: Lying in the bed I made

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