Showing posts with label water polo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water polo. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

three jobs keeping me busy

Back when I first started working in a real, grown-up job, I was also offered a job to coach University High School's girls water polo team. I would absolutely love to coach water polo, but found that it was very difficult to work out my schedule to allow me to do so. However, I decided that I would do it anyway without telling Green Street. This worked well for a while and I thought that if I can fit in one additional job, in the morning before work, I could fit two just as easily. So, I got a job cleaning the house of some very wealthy person living in Newport Coast. Sure, I was tired, but being busy is something that I love.

One morning, the water polo team that i coached had a game against some other high school and we were favored to win by a large margin. As the game progressed my girls forgot all the fundamentals and were just getting run over by the other team. I was getting so upset that they were doing so poorly that I started kicking chairs and yelling at the girls. Never in my semi-professional career had I ever seen anyone play so poorly. They were definitely swimming a mile butterfly after this game. After a disappointing performance and a terrible loss, the stands cleared out and I paced the pool deck while my girls swam. Every puddle that I stepped in, splashing up on my khakis made me even more upset with them. However, the softer side of me began to appeal and I started to feel sorry for my team and stopped their swim. I asked them to think about what had gone wrong and what we could do to play better next time. Everyone left that morning with a better feeling than we had previously and we all knew the action that needed to be taken.

I left the pool deck and headed over to my second secret housing-cleaning job. There was a sauna on the side of the house that I would use as my entrance. I would climb on the roof and enter the sauna; then from there, walk inside the house. I found the rich housewife drinking wine for breakfast and got to work. As I was cleaning the upstairs, people kept coming in and out of the house, tracking dirt around. I had to re-clean everything and when I finally got it all done, I was late for work. Not only was I late, but I also couldn't find my shoes. I remember taking them off when cleaning the upstairs bathroom, but no matter how I searched I just could not find them. After searching frantically, guess who was gnawing on my shoes, but the stupid, mangy dog. I left and showed up at Green Street late with Kao greeting me, saying, "Umm, where have you been and where are your shoes?" I guess I can't get away with secretly holding three jobs.