Poolside Pt. 3

The heat drove me to the pool. I jumped in and did a few laps, Bruce Springsteen's The River Album playing in the background. I got out and went into my usual post swimming position: Laying with my cold wet back on the hot deck, my arms spread in the style of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro. When drips of water rolled down the side of my face, it felt as though the heat from the sun was pushing the water in the way the backside of a magnet pushes metal away. I sat up. I looked down at my feet, which were dangling off the edge of the deck into the water. I saw a wasp inches away. Coolly, I pulled my feet out of the water, scanned my surroundings for a weapon, found a bucket (the type a kid would play with at the beach. It was yellow). I grabbed the bucket and placed it in the air above where the wasp was tranquilly floating in the water. With force I hit the wasp with bucket. After the first hit it was stunned, badly injured but not dead. My only objective was its death. Neither shall live while the other survives, and I was going to survive. I hit it probably 4 times with the bucket, but the water had softened my blows enough that it did not die. I decided to clean up my technique a bit; I used the bucket to push the wasp up against the side of the pool. I smashed it in between the bucket and the wall of the pool. The Boss was singing "Independence Day," and the victory was mine.