Western Springs, IL–Johnny Nelson, a local pool boy, is fed up with the “cryptic, unnecessarily vague” requests of the homeowner for whose pool he is hired to maintain. “Shock the pool?” sources confirmed Nelson as saying in utter confusion as he read a list of sloppily written tasks. “What is that supposed to mean?” The young high school sophomore, unfamiliar with the colloquial phrase for putting chlorine in a pool as “shocking it,” was reportedly seen jumping within steps of the pool, projecting a blood-curdling cry in an effort to “shock the pool into hysterics,” but found the pool’s inanimate behavior “annoyingly obstinate.” “It just stood there,” Nelson remarked. “Like a pool of water or something.” Nelson, who still hadn’t figured out the precise meaning of the pool owner’s “shock the pool” assignment, was later seen throwing a toaster, attached by several extension cords to a live outlet, into the pool, apparently in hopes of electrifying the water. “I still don’t know if that’s what Mr. and Mrs. Wesleyan want, but I’m out of ideas,” Nelson said resignedly. At press time, minutes after Nelson had jumped angrily into the pool–apparently in one last ditch effort to frighten it by “committing to the part and giving it a black eye”–pool owner Greg Wesleyan was heard shouting over speaker phone about Nelson’s “shocking incompetence”: “Are you that stupid that you cannot figure out how to drop a bucket of chlorine into a pool?!”

-TTT