[stag_intro]The only funny thing about the South Summit Aquatic Center is that there is nothing funny about the South Summit Aquatic Center.[\/stag_intro]<\/p>\n
My two year old son turned away from my wife, who was still in the water, and dashed for the other side of the pool. Seeing water, and not understanding the consequences, he dove in. \u00a0My wife, two seconds\u00a0behind him, jumped in and grabbed him. \u00a0To the lifeguard’s credit, she had seen the impending disaster before my wife and was ready to rescue the toddler. \u00a0My wife waived her off and said everything was OK. \u00a0The lifeguard responded with a glare and a shake of her head. Once the lifeguard retreated to her station, I thanked her for being so observant. After saying it again, she responded with a condescending “yeah”.<\/p>\n
As we were getting ready to leave the pool, a little girl got ready to slide down a small water slide. \u00a0Her grandmother was waiting at the bottom of the slide to catch her should she need help. The Grandmother’s daughter waived franticly at her mom and said, “Move back! Move back! They’ll blow the whistle and yell at you if you are too close to the slide!” The grandmother begrudgingly took 5\u00a0paces back as the little girl slid down the slide and plunged helplessly into the water. Her grandmother raced to pull her up. \u00a0It appears I’m not the only one to notice the culture of fear.<\/p>\n It’s really a shame. \u00a0The facility is beautiful. The people at the front desk are really nice, but the people that run the show once you touch water have poisoned the experience for me, and it appears others. It’s a swimming pool for god’s sake — not a nunnery. I’ve heard that the Kamas pool is often empty. \u00a0After a few visits, I can see why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [stag_intro]The only funny thing about the South Summit Aquatic Center is that there is nothing funny about the South Summit Aquatic Center.[\/stag_intro] My two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTwo weeks earlier I had been sitting by\u00a0the South Summit Aquatic Center’s\u00a0pool, with my newborn, while my wife had our toddler\u00a0in the pool. \u00a0Passing time, I looked at each of the lifeguards and had thought, “I’ve been here at least ten times and have never seen any one of these people smile. I’ve\u00a0heard 100 whistles telling someone to stop doing something but I have never seen anything kind.” I realize the job of a lifeguard is to be constantly vigilant but that’s not mutually exclusive from customer service. \u00a0A pool should be fun. \u00a0It should be a place where children learn to be safe in water. It should be a place where they are educated. \u00a0It shouldn’t be a kingdom ruled by fear.<\/span><\/p>\n