the Bitch in the house

Humans do not swim instinctively, but they feel attracted to water and show a broader range of swimming movements than other[s] (Bender 1999: 119-169). And so it goes… swimming season has begun. It reached above 105^ today. Yes, that is well above body temperature for us silly humanoid types. In order to deal with the oppressive blaze and to cool the boiling bloody beast brewing in the summer psyche, daily swimming is a requirement.

We, however, do not own a pool. Though it was a condition to my agreement about moving to the sweaty armpit of a city, I have yet to live with a swimming pool. So the children and I have memberships at the not-so-local-gym. It’s a long trek ot get there and in order to provide the LittlEinstein with some solid swim-time, he is enrolled in the cityswimlessons. These lesson can be awesome affairs with cutey kids all jazzed to hang out with the youngins’ and get some quality sun-baking time in.

As we learned last week, these lessons can also be a nightmare. Two testosteroney teenaged lifeguard boys took the LittlEinstein and threw him off the diving board and into the pool. Mind you, it was a funny experience to watch the little guy use great big words to try to negotiate with the neanderthal instructor who obviously did not find my brilliant smartypants to be as cute as everyone else does. I get it, a nerdy too smartforyou kid isn’t all that ‘cool’ to deal with at any age. I myself am a smartypants and have had to endure a whole lotta folks who just don’t dig that. So here was my babe: trembling so hard that his knees really did knock together shaking the springy board so hard that I feared he might plummet into the water, rather than just splash it. The sinkorswim incident was pretty miserable for the boy and it took nearly 2 hours to get him into his swimsuit and ready for lessons yesterday.

Being the good (fierce) mama that I am, I decided that maybe this rudeboy testosteroney instructor (not awesome enough to be a rude boy) should be vanquished from swimmy lessons job, but then I realize he might need this gainful wage for dating or some such nonsense that could lead to relationship tomfoolery that could inevitably then lead to baby-making at some point in this chumpster’s life. And he NEEDS to learn how to be good to babes and not just the babes in order to be a good papa. So… he gets to keep his employment, but I gently suggest that maybe my munchkin need not be subjected to testosteroneyandintellectuallyintimidated swim instruction. So we changed classes.

The new instructor has no one else in her 7pm class so these are now 1-1 learning expereinces. And my guy willing jumped off the side of the pool and then walked within 6 inces of the edge of the diving board and LittlEinstein let me drop him to the arms of Comet-Named teacher of the week. We were thrilled and he’s ready to try this again! Yeah!!! Swimming is fun, even if it’s not natural!