Lake Ronkonkoma

I had to switch gears with what I would be writing about for awhile, moving from ridiculously random adventures of discovery and new horizons to even more ridiculous adventures of rediscovery of my own little island (and by little I mean an island that is as long as the country of Belgium is wide…200 km… check it out on Google maps.)

I think it began with little things that tipped me off to the fact that reentry would be a little more difficult than expected… namely… forgetting English words and proper sentence structure (I had to struggle to find the word for “butcher” relying on descriptions such as “meat cutting person” AND asked my dad if he “took” a beer…)

More importantly the first morning back I stumbled downstairs looking forward to educating and enlightening my parents (and consequently the rest of this continent) in the wonders that is Italian coffee… Now, my stove in Italy was a gas stove, like the one back home, that instead had to be lit manually, usually with a lighter or flint… depending on what I could find first around the important. After 6 months of grappling with this way to produce the perfect cup of coffee, like countless numbers of our European ancestors, I sought to replicate the Old World in the New…one…with much of the same, let’s just say, unexpected, results of our ancestors.

Standing downstairs, back home, in the kitchen, I asked my mom for a match and proceeded to turn on the gas, waiting for the smell which would tell me to hang up and redial….So the gas was on, and I took the match to it… the only problem was that I forgot we have a pilot light for this stove meaning that…in the end I came very close to lighting most of my downstairs on fire…

Funny how subtle life can be…huh?

Amongst other things I started working again, after 6 months of, well…let’s just say a very Italian paced life. Now, I work for the Town of Islip as a lifeguard; a seemingly benign position…right? Please?

Wrong.

Let me just lay the ground work and paint a picture for you of the beautiful bureaucratic machine that is the Town Islip…First things first… the Republican party has been in power here since the dawn of time meaning that in order to get any job, anything…. You have to be a Republican. I dealt with this moral dilemma last summer, but please, don’t ask me what party I’m registered with…even I won’t like the answer that comes out of my mouth. I have, probably at least 10 bosses depending on who tries to stop by the pool to exercise their authority by making us poor, underpaid lifeguards (at 12 dollars an hour) perform such menial tasks as enforcing rules and shaving in an effort to uphold town policy. My favorite was the most recent case of all the lifeguards being up in arms about the new Town shaving policy…that’s right… now, not only do we have to save you, but we have to look pretty damn good and well kempt doing it. So no facial hair…

Except for mustaches?

Delightful, huh?

Although the Town isn’t particularly good at doing anything of value other than make rules that are never enforced, they seem to have a really good handle on showing everyone who’s in charge, namely operating under the “we say jump, you say how high” paradigm…whilst employing people almost entirely under the age of 25. Imagine that dog who just can’t seem to get a handle on its hormones and humps anything in sight. See where the conflict arises?

They also make us wear realllllly short shorts.

Most recently, and I have to say my favorite endeavor thus far was one of the recertification courses we had to do…at 6 AM…at the town’s lakefront facility…in Ronkonkoma, about 20 minutes from my house all the way on the other (and obviously for that reason, wrong, side of the town.)

Lakes. Skeeve. Me. Out. I grew up 10 minutes from the ocean and take comfort in my large waves, unreasonably salty water and rip currents that could take me out to sea in 2.2. At least I’m prepared for all that. I am never prepared for dealing with the murky and squishy bottoms of lakes and can never seem to get out of my head that scene in Friday the 13th when that little freaking creature takes one last stand and tries to pull his last unsuspecting victim thinking she had survived the night’s terror by escaping in a boat out to the center of the lake, down to the murky depths.

So, I don’t like lakes.

On top of that Lake Ronkonkoma has a number of special reputations, most of which luckily I found out afterwards, otherwise I might have woken up at 5 AM for absolutely nothing.

Lake Ronkonkoma is a kettle lake, meaning that it is OBSCENELY deep…upwards of 70 feet in some spots. It was believed for awhile not to have a bottom, but rather to be connected to a series of under ground aquifers that would eventually lead you to either the Long Island Sound or Ocean…stuff sinks in and can almost assuredly never be found.

Super. That was what I knew besides the fact that it is incredibly gross.

What I didn’t know, however, is that the water level in the lake can’t be explained by seasonal trends…namely meaning that the water level my or may not rise during a drought and fall during times of massive rain… meaning that simply that it’s fucked up. On top of the creepy fluctuations in the water is the ghost of a Native American princess who likes to lure unsuspecting male swimmers to their deaths... She feel through the lake ice while mourning the loss of her husband and apparently has never gotten over it. Apparently people have seen strange glowing in the lake at night and have heard voices luring them out further.

WTF.

This is of course where the town decides to put their facility? Figures.

We watched interesting videos with model lifeguards impressing upon us the values of using safety gloves when putting on a Band Aid during the training then proceeded outside to practice our Baywatch jump and run off the lifeguard stand and out into the water. I made sure to keep my feet off the bottom of the lake at all times.

I’m not kidding around, lakes freak me out.

Then they threw us a curveball…much to the tune of mustaches but not goatees. In the swimming area were two cones that had to be retrieved before we could leave. We had to practice sweeping the swimming area as if we were looking for a body.

Ok… ready for this.
We had to stand in a line and slowly walk across the swimming area feeling for the bottom and anything that would be lurking and ready to pull us under in the seaweed. Once the water got too deep we would have to dive.. swim a meter or two in a line… then surface… feeling for more bodies through the seaweed…then BACK up to the person most behind and repeat the process.

I thought of Friday the 13th immediately.

After our tedious back and forth dives across the swimming area, opening my eyes in and feeling through murky lake water and some sort of plant life I care not to encounter ever again I spotted the second cone… and almost drowned (being sacrificed to that bitch Native American princess) when I tried to scream that I found it.

We were victorious…everybody out of the water!!!!

Except.. oh wait… the idiot running the clinic forgot one part… dry and up on the beach, we dropped our towels and warily waded our way back into the murky abyss.

Bummerrrrrrrrrr.

After this whole endeavor I was very happy to take a shower and get a bagel, trying to comfort myself after a close encounter with toxic, haunted water. Never again!

KBYE.