As Long as I Am Complaining

Harry and I went for a stroll down by the river downtown Saturday evening between stuffing ourselves at Famous Daves and attending the Music Theatre of Wichita's production of "The Full Monty".

The Hyatt Hotel has a lovely water feature. It is a wall with water running down both sides into rectangular pools with steps in them, kind of like a fish ladder.

At intervals of about six feet all along the water feature are plaques on short brick pillars. These plaques say "Help preserve our water feature. No wading or swimming." (I may not have quoted it verbatum, but close enough to convey the intent.)

It amazed me to see that the pool at the base of the wall was if not full, nearly so, of people of all ages wading. (the water wasn't really deep enough for swimming.) What amazed me even more was that these were not people who were just in the area on a hot Kansas nearly summer evening and couldn't resist the pull of the cool water. These people were there specifically to play in the water. They came in their swimsuits, brought their lawn chairs and beer, and had multiple young children in tow. Of course, once the children were in the water they were not carefully supervised. And I don't want to be a snob or seem to be stereotyping, but these also were pretty obviously not people who were staying in the hotel.

I haven't checked with the hotel to see if they relaxed their rules and just couldn't afford to remove the posted signs, but I doubt if that is the case.

Two things bother me about this. First, I am always bothered by the attitude that "the rules don't apply to me" or "the rules apply to me but they are inconvenient or contrary to my wishes, so I will just ignore them". Second, if the behavior on Saturday night was standard, it is just a matter of time before some young child drowns in that pool and the Hyatt gets hit with a lawsuit.

This came on the heels of two people speeding past Kristy and me through Eastborough earlier in the day and neither of them getting stopped and ticketed. That so rarely happens - the Eastborough policeman must have been on his break.

Well, the play was wonderful and I have a new favorite song - "You Walk With Me". But more about that later.