Pissing With Impunity In The Pool

IN LATE MIDDLE AGE I had the good fortune to spend three consecutive summers at a beautiful, modern aqua center, what used to be called a public swimming pool, and to get paid for it. It was a summer recreation program for disabled kids, and I was a happy camper supervisor. Beautiful bikini babes, corny loud summer beach music, energetic children breaking the "no running" rule, all that. Don't worry; I didn't take my shirt off. Didn't need to, I never got in the water. Three summers, and nary a dip. Mainly because my job was to supervise, and keep an eye out. But the real reason was this: everyday there were dozens of kids under the age of, say, twelve, hour after hour in the water, and never did I see any of them leave the pool, and enter the restroom. Red flag, as they say. People started to ask me why I never got wet, and instead sat around glancing at books and at the swimmers, and at first I cited my professional duties. Then, I decided to start telling the truth, the one about kids never going to the bathroom. After all, being in the water stimulates the metabolism, as we all know. Something wasn't right. I always got the same response; complete dismissal. Nobody wanted to believe what to me was an obvious truth; the water was full of chlorine and urine. "The chlorine takes care of it, even if it happens, which it certainly doesn't; the parents are on top of it." All tripe. Rationalizing if ever there was. The plain fact is, chlorine helps, but no, it does not magically eliminate all piss. People like to swim, and they don't like thinking about the water quality. There's a parallel, I think, to climate change. We don't want the world to be in environmental distress, because we don't want to do what it takes to deal with it, which means sacrifice. We avoid the truth only because we would perish if we accepted it, said Goethe. Gallons of urine in the swimming pool are cleaned up for us, somehow, and tons of carbon in Earth's atmosphere are somehow purified by nature, all without our needing to do anything. Like, I am sooo totally sure..