Unfiltered Story #278232

My cousin and I are around fourteen or fifteen. At this swimming pool, they have a normal lap pool, and a diving board pool. The high dive is a solid platform, five metres high, which is intimidating enough that a lot of people who get to the top need a bit of time to pluck up the courage, meaning there’s always a bit of a queue up there.

While we wait our turn, we’re chatting with the various people there, including one girl, about twelve, who is openly quite nervous. It’ll be important to note later that she is slightly on the huskier side. My cousin, who is well used to the diving board, gives her some advice and encouragement before we both jump.

As I surface and reach the side, this girl has approached the edge of the diving board. We yell up some more words of encouragement – along the lines of ‘Go On!’, and ‘You can do it!’ – in between joking about something or other. Either she eventually jumps, or backs off, but we stop paying attention to the diving board and sit on the edge of the lap pool chatting, until a lifeguard approaches us:

Lifeguard: “Hi guys. I’m afraid I’ve had a complaint about you two from that girl over there [points to the girl from the top of the diving board].”

Me: [confused] “What? What did we do?”

Lifeguard: “She claims you were bullying her, calling her fat and saying that she shouldn’t jump because it would make too big of a splash, and if she’s nervous she should pretend there’s a burger at the bottom.”

Cousin: “Er…no. I said she should sit on the edge and just slide off if she’s nervous, and that’s about it.”

Me: “Surely if we were yelling insults up at her, you’d have heard it?”

Lifeguard: “Yeah, it seemed a little outlandish, but I wasn’t sure why anyone would make up something like that so I thought it best to speak to you guys anyway.”

Me: “Yeah, we have no idea why she thought we were making fun of her.”

Lifeguard: “Either way, it’s probably best that you avoid her for the rest of your session. I’ve said the same to her so hopefully this’ll be the end of it. Have a good swim!”

To this day, I really can’t tell why that girl said that to the lifeguard. Whether she genuinely thought we were laughing at her while we were joking about something else, or just wanted to stir up some drama, I have no idea. Either way, it was a weird experience.