In Search of Garrett

“Greetings loved ones. Let’s take a journey…”

Snoop Dogg’s spoken word intro to Katy Perry’s, “California Gurls” probably never once played over the sound system at the Wilson Park Pool here in Cutesville, USA last summer, but in the sound system of my brain, it played every single time.

You see, it isn’t that they play lackluster music at the pool, quite the opposite in fact, but they strictly play hits of decades past from the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, Michael Jackson and such. A new age classic like “California Gurls” would never get airtime, but that certainly never prohibited me from allowing it to play freely across my mind each time I emerged from the men’s changing rooms and out onto the pool area.

“California Gurls” became my designated entrance theme all last summer each time I hit up the pool. Over the course of my life I have had several of these what I call entrance themes. Songs that play across my brain as I enter any given establishment feeling good about myself and few other jams scream summer quite like “California Gurls” does, so it was the perfect pairing in this case. I never pre-plot an entrance theme, they just happen naturally, and Snoop’s introduction on this one really set the tone because this past summer truly was a journey.

As I would exit the men’s changing room and step those first steps into the main pool area I would always do the same exact thing. As Snoop spoke and the infectious beats of “California Gurls” thumped inside my head (because for this particular entrance theme I would just have the beat of the song playing rather than the normal version with Katy’s beautiful vocals. I don’t know why, but it was always strictly just Snoop and the beat.) I would lower my sunglasses to the tip of my nose and peer out amongst all the lounge chairs trying to spot the most desirable ones. Obviously, I had my preferred seating area, but I never break with tradition, so even though I always knew where I would be setting up camp, I still scanned the area in my typical fashion.

Let’s just keep it real here. I was really feeling myself all last summer at the pool – old people get your head out of the gutter – this terminology means I was feeling all in my element, not anything dirty. I would always have on my Polo Ralph Lauren swim trunks and a v-neck tee that was the same color as the pony icon on the trunks. I looked real cute and I’m not even gonna pretend that I didn’t and with my Maui Jim sunglasses on I just felt like the best dressed man at the pool. The pool was my place last summer and it’s literally killing me that this blasted rain has delayed the remodel construction on it for this season. I’m ready to go back dammit, but so much of my yearning to return is because last year we had THE BEST time trying to hunt someone down.

All last summer I was super into Instagram locations stories and would ALWAYS view the one for Cutesville, USA (geographically known as Granite City, Illinois) each morning when I woke. You really never know what you’re gonna come across down here and that certainly plays true on social media as well. I found it to be the perfect start to my day because I would always finish the story wearing a smile boldly across my face. Well, as summer started heating up and the pool opened for the season, there was one Instagramer who would always post pictures from the pool and this individual was clearly a lifeguard because he always showcased his lifeguard gear, namely a red sun visor, roped whistle, and a name tag that read “Garrett.”

Now anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty fucking nosey. I like to know what is going on around me at all times, so while this Garrett posted pretty often to the Wilson Park Pool Instagram story, which would wind up always being a part of the larger Granite City Instagram story, he never once showed himself. His posts most always featured a lifeguard tower or his same three aforementioned items: visor, whistle, and name tag all sitting on top a neatly folded red and white towel. My curiosity was peaked and I was determined to discover which lifeguard Garrett was, but I never do my best work alone, so I brought all my pool-going friends in on this little search.

My day one friend Lindsey and her friend Abby were my most frequent pool partners and literally on the first day of what ended up becoming nearly a dozen pool outings we were all collectively determined to discover Garrett. Given that the lifeguards all wore a name tag around their whistles, we initially anticipated this would be a quick find, but as May turned to June and June to July we realized we had assigned ourselves quite the task!

Through May and June we never really had any strategy or game plan. We never thought we wouldn’t find him, so it never occurred to us to have to pre-think this. We were spotting the name tags in all the easiest ways we could and while we found Dylan, Matt, and Gabriel amongst others we were coming up dry on Garrett.

We would go wait in line on the slide and make sure to give the guard a glance when he told us it was our turn to go down, that was always an easy one to see just like it was spotting any of the lifeguards who had the standing positions. Some of the others proved far more difficult. There were two tall towers and two smaller ones. In order to peep the names on these we would swim out in front of them and casually glance up in the direction of the tower and if the name tag was difficult to see, as they often proved to be with the taller two and not because of their elevation, but because the guard would have the whistle in his mouth, or he would be twirling it around, or the badge would look a bit faded we would resort to small talk. “Sorry to bother you, but could you tell us the time?” or, “what time does the pool close today?” were a couple personal favorites. Small talk nearly always worked because it gave each of us a chance to glance up in the guards direction and several sets of eyes always proved better than one.

After several trips and no Garrett we became obsessed. How was this guard so elusive? We began hypothesizing everything. Maybe he was a boss and was in the office? Maybe he was hurt and was working concessions and merely just longing for his lifeguarding days? Maybe he only worked the morning hours for the members and left when the pool opened to the public at noon? Maybe he only worked the private events in the evening? Maybe he was actually a she? I mean, we pondered anything and everything and decided to pull out all the stops. It was time to find Garrett.

I went to the office and inquired about annual passes one time and on another visit pretended to have lost something and wanted to see if it was in the lost and found and yet no Garrett. We started getting drinks and snacks, but still, no Garrett. We would get there a few minutes before opening hoping to see any guards leaving – none ever did – which meant no Garrett. We weren’t able to check the private parties that were always held in the evening, but we ruled this possibility out because of the times he typically posted his Instagram story. Originally, we never thought Garrett could be a girl, so we never checked the lady lifeguards name tags, but by this point all bets were off, so we began peeping them all, but none of our ladies were a Garrett.

As summer wore on this elusive Garrett began posting less frequently to the Wilson Park Pool Instagram story and we perceived this as making things trickier, but in retrospect there was only ever one day that he posted and we ended up at the pool and that happened to be the very first day we all went, so in reality, this didn’t hinder us nearly as much as we believed it did at the time.

After exercising all of our efforts we came up with a game plan. It was time to work smarter, not harder. We had been to the pool enough by this point to recognize that the lifeguards had a work rotation. Every fifteen or twenty minutes they would rotate workstations in a clockwise manner. As our preferred seating area was right in line with their path, each lifeguard would be forced to walk past us at some point in route to the tall tower by the diving board, thereby giving us the chance to read each those name tags!

There were always ten guards on duty. Eight guarding with two on break. We knew the one on second break would initiate the move, so when we were in the water we would always keep a mindful eye on the front entrance where the guard would emerge from the office to head to the first stop: the small tower that sits where the slide lets out. When the rotation began we would get out of the water and take our spots on our loungers and eagerly anticipate the guard walking by. We spent two entire days working this rotation to our advantage and still NO GARRETT! Who the Hell was this guy and why was he never working when we were there? Needless to say this shit was getting really frustrating.

Well, the universe must have sensed our frustrations because one morning in late July I made a discovery compliments of this elusive Garrett’s Instagram story that completely changed our situation, but what I did with this knowledge remained a secret up until now.

I learned that the Garrett we were searching for was a Garrett we were NEVER going to find. This Garrett was indeed a lifeguard at the Wilson Park Pool, only he was a lifeguard at the Wilson Park Pool in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

I discovered this because in his post he shared a different angle, something he had never once done before, this shot was one of the pool, only this pool that he was looking out over was definitely not the one in Cutesville. I was immediately taken aback. I remember thinking, what the fuck pool is this!?! This isn’t Cutesville Pool! I was mortified! How could we have spent so many months searching for someone we never stood a chance finding!?!

I remained in disbelief and did what I had done many times before, I clicked his avatar and stalked his page. How in the world can one person have so many posts and never feature themselves in a single one of them is beyond me, but this was Garrett the Lifeguards page, a scenic stroll through the midwest void of any actual persons.

He had pictures from all over the country on his permanent feed including several of notable St. Louis area landmarks, so I just assumed that he was one of those fools who was embarrassed by Cutesville and that’s why he never posted anything from here. Well, it would turn out that he never shared anything from Cutesville because he has probably never been to Cutesville. I delved deep into his location tags and started to find a common thread: Arkansas. I then scrolled across a map of the area of his postings and as I did my finger ran right into Wilson Park there in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I’m not gonna lie, I was lowkey pissed at this point. This clown had monopolized our pool parties all summer long and now we were going to have nothing to show for it!

Okay, now let’s be real here, obviously he is not to blame. He was just living his summer freely with no fucking idea that a trio of people a couple hundred miles away were hunting him down. No one ever asked us to search for him, we did that all on our own, but the entire time we were searching I always thought we would eventually find him! So to be sitting there that morning learning that we in fact never would was a real party pooping experience let me tell you.

One would think that with this knowledge surfacing the appropriate thing to do would be to educate the others of the circumstances at hand and call the search off, but I came to the conclusion that while we were never going to find this particular Garrett, it didn’t necessarily mean we wouldn’t ever find another Garrett. After all, we saw new lifeguards there all the time, so it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that another new one would come along and his (or perhaps her) name would, in fact, be Garrett.

Well, I’ll wrap this up for you all real quick. If there is a Garrett who worked at the Wilson Park Pool in Granite City, Illinois in the summer of 2018, he was never once there when we were. We never found a Garrett and the other two walked away after Labor Day thinking this was still a mystery, never once assuming I was aware of the reality. What a drag, but if you think for a second that I didn’t have the best time all summer long hunting this phantom down you are wildly mistaken. It was a thrill sitting on those loungers waiting for the lifeguards to pass as we casually peeped their name tags or swimming up to their seats and standings and engaging them in conversation while again peeping those tags. By the end of the season we were on a first name basis with everyone working there – as in we literally knew everyone’s first name, none of them actually ever knew ours, but that’s neither here nor there – and that would never have happened had we of not engaged in this fun-filled journey.

Well, I do hope you all enjoyed reading this because I really enjoyed reliving it. Last summer was an absolute blast for me even if we never found what we were searching for, but now I just look at this as one of those, “it’s not about getting there, but about how you got there” moments and I for one had an awesome time going nowhere.

A HUGE THANK YOU to EVERYONE who gave me suggestions on the best formats to restart my book writing! I have been looking into each of them and on my next off day will be committing myself to one. Regardless of what program I select I appreciate each suggestion and cannot thank you all enough! Hope everyone is having THE BEST summer and I look forward to sharing with you all again next week!