Swim Class Shenanigans

Freddie's second swim lesson was absolutely fabulous.

Miss Sarah Grace could not say enough good things about how well he's doing.

I wish I could say the same thing about the report that followed Jones's lesson.

While he and I sat to the side waiting for his turn in the pool, Jones did GREAT. When Freddie was finished, Sarah Grace walked him over, and Jones said something along the lines of, "I'm going swimming now!" I thought to myself, "Well, look at my boy. He's all grows up."

Then, as Sarah Grace walked Jones to the pool, I led Freddie to the Children's Changing Area to get him in some dry clothes. Inwardly, I was beaming at how remarkably, alarmingly, surprisingly easy this was. For a minute, I felt so, I don't know, NORMAL.

Then Freddie was dressed, and we walked, hand in hand, to our bench beside the pool - only we didn't get all the way there, because I spotted Jones sitting obstinately across from Sarah Grace. When I walked over, she told me, "He says he's not going swimming." No amount of conversation from me could convince the child who, moments earlier, had been so cavalier about starting his class.

Sarah Grace, God bless her, said, "Just walk out, and I'll force him into the water." We had to do this during his first lesson, and it worked like a charm. Freddie and I went into the lobby and waited and tried to stay out of Jones's eyesight, which isn't easy, because the pool is separated from the lobby by nothing more than a wall of glass.

I kept an eye on the people pouring out of the pool. None of them looked full of angst. None of them talked to their pool partner about the maniacal child screaming maniacally while standing in 6 inches of water, so I thought things must be okay.

Well, they weren't.

When I went back in 20-some minutes later, Sarah Grace told me he'd continued to act like that the ENTIRE 30 minutes. I wanted to die. Profusely, I apologized to Sarah Grace, assuring her he'd be punished. I then put him in dry clothes and informed him of the consequences he'd face for his actions - the most obvious being that he would NOT be able to get the pair of goggles I'd promised both boys if they'd had a good week at their lessons.

But Freddie got HIS goggles - a Spiderman pair that he more frequently refers to as "Superman goggles." His pick was quick. He knew as soon as he saw them that those were the ones for him. He ate Chick-fil-a and drank a strawberry milkshake, while Jones had chicken noodle soup at home.

I don't really have a moral to this story - but I AM reminded of something my Mayme used to tell me all the time. I was this willful child not unlike the boy I bore, and I had a mess - literally; I would not let her comb it - of matted curls. She'd uncoil one, get that gleam in her eye, and good-naturedly quote to me a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It went like this:

"There was a little girl with a curl,
right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very good indeed,
but when she was bad, she was horrid."

The child I write about is a boy, and his hair isn't especially curly, but still.

I can TOTALLY pick up what Longfellow was laying down.

Siiiiigggggghhhhhh.

Y'all might want to go ahead and start praying for his teacher this fall.