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THE EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK with GARY GRACA
table of nt t A look at the big news events this week and how important they really are. Conveniently ranked from one to10.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - The Michigan Daily
AM-
Personal S
4C YOUR FIRST APARTMENT
Know your rights when you're talking with
your landlord and paying your rent.
SC HOT WHEELS
The UM Solar Car Team takes another
trip to Australia to show off its newest,
fastest model.
6-8C
SL MAKING IT
BIG
You never know
where life will
" take you, but
you can make a
lot of money along
the way.
9C ONCE A CHEATER,
ALWAYS A CHEATER
The psychology behind
why you're cheating on that
psych test and why you'll
cheat on your income taxes
later in life
11B WATCHING OVER THE FLOUNDERS
A lifeguard describes her experiences
watching her professor play on a nude
water polo team.
MOVIN'ON UP
After the state legislature moved the pri-
mary elections to Jan.15, the new number
twoin the primary season is Michigan. In
10 response, New Hampshire is planning to
hold its election tomorrow.
IT'S BETTER THAN NOTHING
For four hours on Friday, same-sex couples
in Iowa were allowed to marry after a
county judge lifted the state's ban on
same-sex marriages. changing his mind, he
10 postponed his decision, awaiting an appeal.
3 Even Britney Spears's marriage lasted lon-
ger than that.
THOSE WEREN'T POTATOES
Add Idahoan Sen. Larry Craig (R) to the list
of hypocritical same-sex critics alongside
evangelist Ted Haggard. After serving a
lifetime as a beckon of conservative val-
10 ues, the senator was looking for a different
4 kind of service in an airport bathroom.
0
0
0,
LABORINGON LABOR DAY
President Bush must misunderstand what
he is supposed to do on Labor Day. Instead
of taking Monday off, he made a surprise
10 visit to Iraq - the only day he has actually
4 done hisjob this year.
BUT NOTHING JUST SUCKS
Ruling that the issue is moot, 6th U.S. cir-
cuit court of Appeals denied an appeal
challenging the constitutionality of
Proposal 2. Sorry minorities; apparently
10 racial disadvantage is only a hypothetical
3 concern.
BYE, BYE GONZALES
Following on the heels of Karl Rove,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
resigned from his position. when asked
for a comment, he couldn't recall how he
10 lost his job, but he thinks he might have
7 been present at the meeting.
rule 34: AA is a program for
alcoholics, not an acceptable
abbreviation for Ann Arbor.
rule 35: Guys don't drink
out of straws. rule 36: It's
acceptable to drink at noon if
you're with two or more peo-
ple. You can push the accept-
able time up an hour for each
extra person you're with.
- E-mail rule submissions to
TheStatement@umich.edu
Trading bathing suits for birthday suits
PERSON OF THE WEEK
TIM JOHNSON
With slurred speech and the aid of a motorized chair,
Sen. Tim Johnson is expected to cast his first vote
in the Senate today since he suffered a severe
brain hemorrhage in December. The South Dakota
Democrat was hospitalized just weeks after last
year s elections, and his critical condition left the
new 51-to-49 Senate Democratic majority literally
on life support for several weeks. After spending
nearly eight months in intensive therapy to regain
his speech, Johnson joked last week that he had
an advantage over his colleagues in the Senate
- his stroke made him the only senator whose
mind worked faster than his mouth.
f the walls of the Intramural Sports
Building could speak, they would have a
few words to say about the men's water
polo club that meets in its pool every Friday.
I know Ido.
My story of the water polo club is not
meant to elicit sympathy or repulse you to
the point that you refuse to swim in the
IM Building's pool ever again. Instead, it is
my intention to simply inform you of a long
standing tradition at the pool - a tradition
whose existence I know you will second-
guess.
I had worked as a lifeguard for the
Department of Recreational Sports at the
University for three semesters before sign-
ing up for the Friday afternoon shift at the
IMSB pool during the 2006 spring semester.
The three semesters had been fairly typical
of most lifeguard jobs involving a couple
bloody noses and a few instances of helping
apply flippers to an elderly man's feet. The
semesters were ordinary.
The Friday afternoon shift is different.
The club calls itself the Flounders. I was
curious, but never asked where the name
came from. In fact, I tried to keep my ques-
tioning the Flounders members to a mini-
mum. Contrary to my prior experiences of
being a rule-barking lifeguard, I took direc-
tions from these pool patrons. With the
Flounders in my pool, I was humbled.
The club is comprised of about twenty or
CHEATING
From page 10C
back and forth between the two
poles until it settled on a nice
balance. The innocents wisen up,
and the crooks stay creative. In
lecturehall evolution, tattle-tales
will be naturally selected when
the cheating gets out of hand.
We're not at that point yet.
In my quest to become better
acquainted with the early letters
of the alphabet, I sit for exams
and watch the cheaters leave for
the bathroom, peek into their
bookbags, read off the backside
of their water bottles. And from
within, a slow, seductive voice
whispers to me.
"Don't do it. Be a man. Take
the goddamned C+." offerir
--- -dona
WRITE FOR
THE
STATEMENT.
2420
Mass meeting. Thursday, (734
Sept. 6 at 8 p.m. at 420 HOU
Maynard St.
so men, but only a dozen showed up every
week. There were a couple of regulars you
could count on always being there, but I
often saw new faces. A few of the men were
young, but most were probably over SO.
Awkwardly enough, one of them was a for-
mer professor of mine.
After the men got warmed up and broke
The job of a lifeguard
is hard enough without
the water polo players
swimming nude.
into two teams, they usually only had 45
minutes for their match. As a former water
polo player, I'm familiar with the rules, but
the Flounders played a version of the game
I've never seen before. They had no goals
and, seemingly, very few rules. One team
just had to get the ball from their end to
the opposite wall, by any means necessary.
They held each other underwater and by the
neck, pushed each other up against the wall,
and there were many instances of crotch
grabbing.
And it gets better. They played naked.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm a girl or
if it's because I'm acting on lifeguarding
instincts to always wear proper swimwear
in the pool, but I cannot for the life of me
understand why these men needed to be
naked to play this game. Maybe it's some
gentleman's club ritual that I'm just unfa-
miliar with. But, Ihavea feeling the reasons
are a lot more deep-rooted in the twenty
men who showed up to play the game week-
after-week.
Charitably, the men didn't always play
naked in front of me. they usually only feel
comfortable playing naked in front of a male
lifeguard.
Unfortunately for them, the one male
lifeguard at the time willing to watch them
had another commitment on Friday. So they
changed into swimwear while I sat quietly
in the pool hallway, and they were careful
not to expose themselves while playing.
There were, however, instances when play-
ers showed up late and took off their pants
only to realize later that there was a female
lifeguard. And when the game got intense,
Speedos slipped or tore. I will admit to see-
ing some things that I hope I never have to
again.
Even with their swimwear loosely cling-
ing to them, the potential for nudity made
me uncomfortable to the point that I spent
the 45 minutes every meet staring at my
Sudoku puzzle and only looked up if I heard
cries of pain.
In an e-mail to my boss only minutes after
I returned home from my first Flounders
shift, I wrote that I felt "extremely uncom-
fortable for a majority of my shift. The men
were very unhappy to discover that I was
their guard ... I am hoping that a male guard
can take over the Flounders portion of my
shift. I really do not think I can continue to
work this shift."
My request fell on deaf ears. Nobody
wanted my shift.
After about the third week, some of the
Flounders started calling me "doll" and
ceased their whispers that the "girl" life-
guard was back. I still couldn't get past the
notion that I had been set up by employer,
and the Flounders were a practical joke. I
was still waiting for the head lifeguard to
pop around the corner during my final shift
and shout "Gotcha!"
I haven't checked on my friends at the
IMSB since that last shift more than a year
ago. Perhaps some of the men have graduat-
ed to the world of lap swimming since then,
but I hope that if the Flounders are still
around, they've gotten a male lifeguard so
they can continue to play their rather rowdy
game of water polo naked.
- Theresa Kennelly is an associate
editorial page editor for The Michigan Daily.
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IBD Student Group Meeting.
Many students on and off campus manage
a full time student life and their Crohn's /
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engage even more STUDENTS. Be a part
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your own on Thursday, September
20"" at the group meeting!
Sponsored by Dr. Ellen Zimmermann
Director of the University of
Michigan IBD Program
Free Food will be
Date:
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Time:
7-9 P.M.
I nLatinn-
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aaubrey@umich.edu
or
Just show up!
Provided for All!!