Originally Posted by
Ayla of Duluth
Anyways.
So as you may know, I was recently granted permission to use one of the pools at my local hotel to practice swimming in my mermaid tail. Well yesterday I was there and I was supposed to meet my friend there who was going to be my spotter/swim partner. I had told the general manager of the hotel that I would not swim if I didn't have an assistant with me. So anyways, I get to the hotel when the pool is empty. I get in the water and put my tail on and all that jazz. At this point I'm actually waiting for a journalist from the local newspaper to show up and interview me and take pictures for the paper. I figured I could swim while she was there even if my friend wasn't with me because she needed pictures and I'm the only one in the pool, so if I needed help, I would obviously have someone's attention at all times. Interview went great.
At this time there is actually a hockey team from Michigan or something in the lobby of the hotel. Around 20 kids and 50 adults were staying here.
So here I am with the pool to myself until 4, when suddenly a girl from the hockey team comes to check out the pool and she sees me splashing around on the stairs in the shallow end. Next thing I know, all 20 kids are swarming me, asking questions, etc. They're teenagers, so I don't try to fool them. I told them where I got my tail and all that jazz.
Fast forward to about a half hour later. The hockey team parents all come in with food and drinks and whatnot for some sort of poolside party thing they were going to keep busy with while the kids swam. This is where it gets confusing. The teenagers from earlier weren't in the pool area. Instead I'm being swarmed by ten year olds, who are at that stage where they experiment with trying to be popular, snobby, all that stupid jazz. [Note my assistant/friend still hadn't shown up, I've been at the pool for about an hour and a half now.]
Anyways, these kids were BRUTAL. They were all girls, again, around 10 or 11 years old. They don't believe in mermaids anymore. So instead of me entertaining the kids by being a mermaid, I spent the next two hours trying to get away from them. They were shouting at me, chanting "fake fake fake," calling me a liar, poking, prodding, and ripping at my tail, and at one point, five of these girls had grabbed my fluke up near the ankles and were trying to pull my tail off of me. If I hadn't been holding onto the railing, they would have dragged me into the deep end of the pool. I was still wearing the shell belt Raven had made for me as I hadn't gotten a chance to take it off after the photos hoot with the news journalist. The girls ripped ALL the shells off my belt and ran off with them, hiding them in the chaos of the party going on with the parents. I did my best to be persistent, to stay in character, telling the girls that I was real and that if they didn't believe in me, fine. At one point, I had to snap at a girl because she came right up to my face and was acting a bitch, wagging her finger at me, rolling her eyes, and calling me names, saying her mom told her that mermaids aren't real. I looked her dead in the eyes and said she was being very rude and she needed to leave me alone. I was not in the mood to deal with her after she was one of the girls who contributed to ripping apart my shell belt.
This whole time, I was trying to figure out how I'm possibly going to get out of the pool area without taking my tail off. Much to my dismay, there is no ramp from the pool area to the lobby, so my mermaid wagon isn't an option. My dad was my next thought as maybe he could carry me out, but my tail gets waterlogged and doesn't drain very easily, so along with 140 pounds of me, and a 20 pound tail, there's also like 10 pounds of water that gets stuck in the foot area of my tail. Way too much for him to carry. He threw out his back a few years ago and he's 65 years old so he can't even pick me up without my tail on. I ended up scooting myself across the deck to the shower area where my dad held up a towel to guard me from prying eyes. I quickly got changed and on my way out, I heard all the girls start screaming again, "SEE I TOLD YOU SHE WAS FAKE, SHE'S A LIAR MERMAIDS DON'T EXIST" blah blah blah. I felt like I was being laughed out of the room. I didn't even make it out of the hotel before I burst into tears. Even the employees at the front desk sympathized with me and said how horrible the kids staying at their hotel can be, because it's a very high end hotel and all the spoiled kids with rich parents stay there.
Anyways, just needed to get that off my chest. I feel like if I had just had an assistant, it would have gone much better. Perhaps the kids wouldn't have targeted me so much if I hadn't been alone. And maybe my assistant could have been strong enough to haul me out of the pool area with my tail on. I don't know. But I've posted an ad on craigslist looking for a volunteer assistant to come with me whenever I need to swim. Idk if anyone will take me up on the offer, but they will get paid if they assist me during paid gigs. We'll see.
