Cyclops At The Pool

Attending my third high school in four years put me in the position of knowing just how many freaky-looking dudes were in town. I could tell you all about Uni (he of the one eyebrow), Toad (bulging eyes and a large wart), Crow (very thin with dark skin and sharp nose), Lunchbox (looked like he was in grade five complete with the little kid’s lunchbox), Carp (eyes way far away from his nose), and Sniff (he either had Tourette’s syndrome or a constant cold). These are just a few notables. There are others, many others, me and my buddies tended to nickname. Cruel and crude? It was high school. Oddly these guys weren’t bullied.

One particular kid by the name of Bobby Gilbert aka Bob Clops. He was medium height, bone skinny, and had slicked-back black hair with a bit of a pompadour. He dressed like a fifties rocker; jeans or black pants with ankle cuffs, a white T-shirt and socks, and patent leather shoes with nailed-on clicks. You could maybe make a case for his nickname of Clops because of the noise he made walking along the school corridors; the clicks echoing from one end to the other--clopping along. That’s what he thought. Clop-clop, clopping, like a horse.

Or with one glance you’d see that the name was well-deserved as he had a glass eye—the right eye. We weren’t as heartless and cruel as you might imagine because we cleverly omitted the Cy prefix before his name. Bob’s glass eye tended to leak a yellowy mucus requiring an occasional wipe using a red or blue hanky. The fluid reminded us of the yellow-matter custard in a dead dog’s eye shop. After the wipe, he’d partially stuff it into his back pocket leaving the disgusting thing to sway as he walked. Ugh. It was as good as hanging a ‘KEEP BACK 100 FEET’ sign from his back. If he got mad, he’d pull out the hanky and ‘wave the flag around’, quickly ending any altercation or discussion.

Bob Clops could take a joke and didn’t seem to mind the ribbing. A favorite gag was to sneak up behind him while he sat, either on the bus or at his desk, and slowly move a pencil beside the glass eye until the peripheral vision from his left caught the action. Occasionally, he’d move his head that way to see what was going on. The pencil would hit his eye, which would elicit tons of laughs and a possible ‘flag-waving’ at the perpetrator of the pencil gag.

Bob’s glass eye gave him problems besides the mucus. As his head and eye socket grew, his glass eye didn’t. I don’t know what they cost or where you go to buy them, but Bob Clops was slow to upgrade.

He had to avoid the ‘Zipper’ ride at the county fair and hearty slaps on the back, just to name a few lest the eye pop out. Clops had good hands though. One hand would cover the empty socket while the other could deftly snag the orb in mid-air.

At the city pool one blistering hot July day Clops snapped his towel at me. First thing I looked for was the handkerchief hanging from his swim trunks. No hanky. I watched him head over to the deep end and the low dive board. He looked odd out of his 50s gear and the pompadour lay listlessly like a dead fish. He’d told me his parents warned him not to open his eyes underwater as the chlorine might discolor the glass eye and ruin the other.

He dove. When he came up thrashing, one hand over his eye, I knew what happened.

He struggled over to the ladder and pulled himself out of the water, immediately heading for a lifeguard. The lifeguard perched on his high perch looking down at Clops who waved one hand out toward the water while the other was held over the hole in his head.

The lifeguard on the chair, a senior from Eastdale high, wore an ID tag: John. His face contorted in confusion trying to unravel Clops’ ranting. John came down from the chair and held out his hands in a calming manner.

“My eye! It fell out!” stated Clops. “It’s in the water! I can’t see it! You gotta close the pool!”

“I can’t just close the pool,” said John. “What kind of bullshit story you handing me?”

Clops never called his artificial eye a ‘glass’ eye—it was simply his eye.

Clops shrugged. He removed his hand from his face revealing the black hole.

John took a second for the sight to register before the horror kicked in. “Holy shi-it.!”

“You gotta close the pool and get it,” pleaded Clops, putting back his hand.

John’s mouth hung open slightly and he looked at the pool office; a small shack with windows, where the other two lifeguards were…enjoying each other. Jeanette and Frankie were necking up a storm. John looked back at Clops and said, “I should…” then trotted toward the office.

“Hey, Frankie!” called John on his way over, with Clops in tow. No reaction. “Frankie!”

Frankie and Jeanette slowly parted from their lip lock.

Frankie ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and licked his lips. “What’s up, Number Two?”

John rolled his eyes. Frankie was the head lifeguard and never failed to let everyone know who was boss. “We got to close the pool.”

Number three, Jeanette, began straightening her bikini top.

“Are you nuts?” said Frankie, frowning. “You can’t just close the pool.” He turned back to Jeanette, grabbed her shoulder strap, and snapped it. She chuckled.

“I’m serious. This is…different,” said John. “This guy here lost an eye. So just clear the pool then.”

Clops stepped out from behind John and nodded his head.

“What’s the problem with him?” asked Jeanette.

“I told you, seriously man, the guy’s eyeball fell out.”

“How the hell does an eye just fall out?” Jeanette laughed and began to rapidly work on her bubble gum.

Clops explained how he dove off the board, the water smacked him hard in the face, and his eye popped. Then he went on about the skull-growth thing, never mentioning it was a glass eye.

Jeanette laughed. “That’s nuts.”

Frankie smirked. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“Nope.” Clops removed his hand and gave them the full frontal, flashing the black hole at them.

“Ugh!” Jeanette coughed, nearly swallowing her gum.

Frankie rubbed his face. “Jeanie, get the first aid kit. There’s a pool manual around here somewhere.”

“Just close the pool for a few minutes,” said Clops.

“Anything else fall in?” asked Frankie.

“Like what?” asked Clops.

“I don’t know…there’s a hole and your brain is—”

Clops frowned. “If you don’t hurry it might come out in the water.” He turned to me and chuckled.

I laughed. As this was going on I asked Clops how to find his blue eye in a blue pool. Jeanette pulled the first aid kit out from a desk drawer and began rummaging through the box, looking for the specific, essential instrument that could successfully push an eyeball back in or keep brains from slipping. Frankie flipped through the Standard Lifeguard Manager Protocols or something, trying to find the emergency section. John kept an eye on the swimmers.

Frankie looked up from the book. “Where’s your eye now?” asked Frankie.

“In the deep end,” said Clops.

Jeanette looked up from the medical page describing how to deal with an injured eye. “Does it hurt much?”

“Only when he tries to stare real hard at someone,” I said.

Clops nudged me hard in the ribs.

Jeanette frowned and readied a roll of gauze. “Okay, we can put this in till we find your eye and…I guess, try to put it back in? Like, should we call an ambulance first?”

“No, don’t.” Clops drew in a deep breath. “It’s not a real eye.”

The lifeguards all looked at Clops in confusion.

“What?” asked Frankie. “What is it then?”

“It’s made from glass. A glass eye,” replied Clops.

“Oh-h-h,” they said in unison, their brows furrowed.

Frankie asked if it was a health hazard. That made me think of the yellowy custard that leaked from which may be floating around, maybe even getting drawn into swimmers’ mouths. Without the glass orb plugging the hole, the stuff could flood out anytime.

Clops shook his head. “Can we just get it out of the water before someone finds it? My parents will kill me.”

The three lifeguards looked at each other, mystified.

“I know,” said Frankie with a snap of his fingers. “John, get the Turd-Snagger!”

John nodded and ran behind the office to the maintenance shack. In a few moments, he returned with an enormously long aluminum pole with a small net on its end. The white netting had some undetermined brown stains. The Turd-Snagger was a 30-foot pole designed to reach any spot in the pool from the safety of the pool apron. Its ability to capture unleashed turds in its fine netting was unmatched.

“Will it fit in there?” asked Jeanette, of no one in particular.

Frankie looked at her and told John he’d issue the order. He grabbed the bullhorn from a wall peg.

John balanced the pole while he awkwardly threaded his way through the crowd, stepping over blankets and kids. Clops followed with hopeful expression.

The order to clear the pool was sometimes used for trivial reasons and was usually followed by the fingering of a perpetrator/perpetrators and their subsequent dismissal. The lifeguards often used it just to get rid of someone they didn’t like or when they got ‘accidentally’ splashed. City pool lifeguards tended to melt on contact with water. New rules were made up on the spot by the autocratic lifeguards. There was the occasional time when someone didn’t want to come out requiring the Turd-Snagger to be used like a cattle prod, pinning a perp in a corner or poking at an offender in the water. The Snagger awaited.

When John reached the deep end with the group, Frankie cleared his throat and clicked on the bullhorn.

“Clear the pool! Clear the pool!”

He wasn’t heard over the cacophony of laughter and screams and splashes, so he cranked the volume, creating a wowing feedback effect. The pool noise died as some covered their ears.

“CLEAR THE POOL IMMEDIATELY! CLEAR THE POOL IMMEDIATELY!”

Some complied. Most just looked at each other trying to pick out the offender or wore puzzled expressions wondering what they’d done to warrant getting kicked out.

Jeanette came out of the office and let out an ear-piercing blast on her whistle. John stood with the Snagger resting just above the water, shaking his head. That got their silence.

“There’s an eyeball in the pool, get out!” called Frankie, followed by ear-screeching feedback for the bullhorn.

Everyone turned to the lifeguards.

The announcement was still being digested when Clops removed his hand from his face. “My eye fell in the water!”

The sight of the empty hole in his head need the required second to sink in before all eyes went down to their feet. Screaming began along with a stampede onto dry land—in record time. The water surface became a mirror revealing every lane marking, paint peel, intake, dropped locker key, and quarters on the blue bottom. But no glass eye.

“What color’s your eye?” asked John sweeping the pool bottom. He squinted at Bob’s eye for a moment before continuing.

Clops moved to sit on the end of the low board. “Blue,” replied Clops.

“Shit.” The pool bottom was painted blue.

Frankie and Jeanette were busy maintaining discipline as the swimmers inched ever closer to the pool edge, scooping out water to splash themselves or dunk in their towels to keep cool. A few dove in to retrieve quarters and were subsequently thrown for their trouble. They were thrown out for ‘rippling’, Frankie’s new rule.

John was getting nowhere because the eye was almost invisible against the blue bottom. After fifteen minutes they’d thrown out half the people and Frankie, at the end of his wits closed the pool entirely.

I watched from behind the fence as Frankie tossed a dive mask to Clops. “You better find it before the evening lifeguards get here.”

Clops dove in and began his search. Time after time he came up empty until the one time his arm broke the surface and the eye was in his hand. I clapped. He sat on the pool edge and used two hands to jam it in.

“No more Cyclops now, got your eye back,” I called out.

“What?”

“I said you’re not Cyclops now!”

“Oh…I thought it was because of my shoes.”