In another life, I was the Fitness Director for a large health club, owned by one of the stupidest men I have ever known. Our owner’s goal was to staff his facility with people who were not as bright as he was, and for a long time I was a little offended that he hired me. (Years later, it occurred to me that because I took the job, and stayed there way longer than any intelligent person would have, he achieved his goal.) My main purpose was to make sure that the training staff, untrained, underpaid and dangerously stupid, did not irrevocably maim the members who would then sue the owner.
The only person on the staff I could even tolerate was our Aquatics Director, a morose, pessimistic hulk of a woman whose youthful swimmer’s build had, cruelly, morphed into an orca-like physique at menopause. She and I bonded during innumerable staff meetings and often drank heavily on our lunch hour. (The hottest ticket in the gym were the poolside seats to observe a drunk fat lady in a muumuu teach water ballet.)
It was during a routine staff meeting that Penny shared her latest idea. Penny, our exuberant Activities Director, decided that we needed to hold a Fitness Challenge to benefit a worthy charity and drum up some publicity. I was immediately opposed, not because I am against charity, but because Penny rarely saw a distinction between “publicity” and “infamy.” The Aquatics Director was opposed because she opposed everything that Penny proposed.
In this case, Penny had decided that we would get as many gym members as possible to spend the day in the pool. They would each get sponsors to “float” them and we’d raise “buckets” of money for charity. Would they be exercising? I asked. “No,” said Penny, there was not enough room in the pool; they would just stand there.
To me, this seemed like a fitness challenge for underachievers, but Penny already had a slogan: “Soak for the Cure.” The Aquatics Director spoke first. “The cure for what?” she asked. “Disease!” said Penny.
“Which disease?” I asked. “All of them!” said Penny. This seemed overly ambitious and I said so. Penny shot me a withering look, clearly implying that I was in favor of illness, “Why limit ourselves?” she said frostily.
Since we were doing this for publicity our owner decided we needed to focus on one specific disease, preferably one with “lots of cute, sick children, because,” as he said, “everyone loves sick kids.” Penny pointed out that since the barracudas at the BocaRaton health clubs had already taken all the “good” diseases, like breast cancer and heart disease, the pickings were mighty slim for us. Eventually we narrowed our Cause to two possibilities: Crohn’s &- Colitis or sickle cell anemia; we finally chose sickle cell because the owner did not want any irritable bowels in his pool. Now, planning began in earnest for “Soak for the Cure.”
Our Aquatics Director felt that getting a crowd of people to stand for hours in an outdoor South Florida pool in August was unwise, suggesting that those who weren’t struck by lightning would probably be felled by heat stroke, but Penny had thought of that too: “Fire trucks!” she said triumphantly. We looked at her, mouths hanging slack. Penny planned on having firemen on hand to hose off the crowd with cooling water.
I asked Penny if she really wanted to combine fire hoses with a benefit for sickle cell disease but she did not see my point. The Aquatics Director asked if this was the kind of publicity she wanted. Penny would not be dissuaded. “There is no bad publicity,” she said.
Rarely has an idea this stupid been brought to fruition, but our owner loved the concept, and “Soak for the Cure” was scheduled. The local media were enchanted by the idea and sent crews to cover the event, which consisted of watching several hundred gym members milling aimlessly in the water. There were no thunderstorms, but as the Florida afternoon progressed it got hotter and hotter and our members, fingers wrinkling, were turning dangerous shades of red.
Cameras rolling, Penny cued the firemen who, obligingly, aimed the hoses over the heads of our members, (a tactic had never been tried in Selma,) and turned on the water. Immediately, madness ensued. Apparently our members’ charitable impulses ended when their $100 haircuts were being drenched and in the mad rush to get out of the pool, numerous people slipped and fell, some were hurt, all were furious.
Of course the press loved it, and judging from the Sunday papers, apparently there is such a thing as bad publicity: “This Event Is All Wet” said one headline, while another screamed, “A Soaking for Charity.” My favorite though, said it all: “Club Members Get Hosed.”