The Honor System

Whatever happened to the honor system in our society? You know what I'm talking about. Respecting one another. Following the rules.

Our townhouse community has a pool that our complex shares with the complex to our north. For the past 14 years we've lived in our townhouse, every summer the pool has had a lifeguard protecting and monitoring. This year the condo board decided to switch the pool from chlorine to saline (or whatever the salt-water type pools are called) and forego the lifeguard. At first I thought it was a great idea. Having had a pool in the backyard growing up, I hated having a stranger stare at me while I huffed and puffed my way through laps. But all that has been changing lately.

When the pool switched over from lifeguard to no lifeguard, the hours of the pool changed as did the scheduled "adult time" swims. Fair enough. From 5pm to 7pm each evening the pool is supposed to clear out of all children under the age of 16. Unfortunately, though, few seem to want to go by the rules.

Yesterday, hubby went for a swim after work. As the clock turned 5pm, a gentleman in the pool with a handful of kids with him, asked hubby, "Do you need a lane?" Hubby is very gentle and quiet and didn't want to kick the guy out, but it bothered him. Obviously, the man knew the rules of the pool but just chose not to follow them. What's with that?

This afternoon, hubby and I went over to the pool around 4:30 when he got home from work. Again, there were about 8 people in the pool and not a single one budged at 5pm to get their small children out of the pool. By 5:15 I was getting perturbed but was, like hubby, too timid to enforce the rules, partly because it's not my job to police the pool (or is it?) and I really don't want my neighbors hating me and thinking of me as the mean child-hating barren woman.

Needless to say, we intend to write a letter to our condo board to complain about these new pool rules and the lack of enforcing. But what really bugged me was the fact that we HAVE to complain and enforce the rules. What happened to people just following the rules. Every single person got the letter telling us the pool hours. It's open from 9am to 9pm with only 5-7pm set aside for adults only. Is it THAT difficult to take your children home for 2 hours at dinnertime? Geesh!

I think this incidence speaks to a deeper problem. We live in such a self-centered, disrespectful society now that rules really don't mean anything. Every day as we drive around our city, shop in our malls and live in our own homes we see the effects of the sinful nature. Numero Uno is most important to the majority of people and if they don't like the rules, they just ignore them ore rewrite them. It's tragic!

Just had to get that off my chest!

Just a quick little blurb about my obsesession tonight... WOOHOO... Reid WILL be back on the finale!!! A true love story might just happen this year on the Bachelorette!!! I only have one more week left of my obsessive behavior (I hope) and then hubby can stop laughing at me, I can sleep properly again, and clean my house - lol. It's gonna be a great show next Monday... I can barely wait!