Who Pees in Your Pool?

What's better than an early mid-summer morning dip in a pond surrounded by silent, cool pines; empty lifeguard chairs; and cool sand? Perhaps only all that and an early read of the Sunday paper and a preliminary glance at Thich Nhat Hanh's Peace Is Every Step.

You take in the clear and sharp, still yellow light of early morning under a vividly blue sky not yet diminished by August humidity, and you relax while your child looks for fish in the shallow water and builds drippy castles with soft mud and your husband soaks in the sports page.

In Peace you read: "Our senses are our windows to the world, and sometimes the wind blows through them and disturbs everything within us. Some of us leave our windows open all the time, allowing the sights and sounds of the world to invade us, penetrate us, and expose our sad, troubled selves.We feel so cold, lonely, and afraid."

Deal me in, you think, because you get that stuff about the windows. There is peace in your heart because you have just gleaned an insight from the hard-won wisdom of a great teacher. Amen.

And then a boy who is about 10 named Armando comes to the edge of the little pond. He pees. Your husband stops your lovely thoughts and says, "That kid just peed."

You note that Armando is only a few yards from your daughter, whose hands are in the sand. The kid is so uncouth that he 1. doesn't step into the water or behind a tree to be discrete, 2. pees in front of a little girl, and 3. doesn't mind in the least that your husband has just announced to the world that he just peed in the sand.

You want to close those windows, to keep your senses from overloading, but you can't. You say, "Della, that kid just peed; come over here to build castles." Truly and without the slightest doubt you want to smack Armando upside the head. He's disgusting.

Damn. So much for the peace and quiet, the tranquility, the calm, the reconnection with the cosmos that this morning had offered. Armando has arrived.

So we go for a walk, all the while trying to process the idea that a pre-adolescent male doesn't have enough sense to use the restrooms in this obscure little state park. In less obscure parks where the bathrooms are teeming with disease, you might forgive Armando, but not here in the Unknown Forest.

That he is so lazy he just pees where he pleases is unconscionable. Where, oh where, is his mama? If I had asked the same center-of-the-universe child to stick his face in the toilet bowl, he would likely decline, yet there he is with a dozen of his closest young hooligan relatives peeing in the water where they--and everyone else--would swim.

As we walk, who should come up behind us but Armando and his gang of malcontents. Having bored of terrorizing the Canada geese--or perhaps sensing the manly and determined ire of the strangers swirling around him in response to his antics--Armando is out behind us to reconnect with nature. Hearing his name, we stand aside so we can choose our path free of his influence.

Forever the name Armando will be synonymous with peeing in the pond, peeing in the pool, peeing on your neighbors in sheer disregard for them as human beings, as creatures sharing this space with you.

I need to get back to Hanh's book and relearn the lesson. Persons who meditate well aren't disturbed by the Armando's of the world, so I know I have a ways to go. Meanwhile, though, I'm wondering why anyone thinks it's okay for anyone else to swim in their pee. My window remains closed on Armando.