Feisty Repartee

Summer means fun, right?

Seriously. How many times have you heard the saying: "Summer means fun."

Must have been a child or child-like mind to have coined that phrase.

Summer means hot, damn hot.

Summer means the little ones are out of school with oodles and oodles of pent up and misguided energy.

Summer means endless discussions of when we are next going swimming. The kicker is, those discussions usually begin on the way home from swimming. Sheesh.

Sweet One has now gone to and finished tennis camp and her week-long girls' camp. Tomorrow she begins a baby-sitting course. Now, don't roll your eyes, she wanted to take the classes and they will be teaching CPR.

Wee One has been in gymnastics and is in the second week of swimming lessons.

Gymnastics has been great.

Swimming lessons...hmmm...let's see...shall I say she swims like a rock? More accurately, she sinks like a rock.

I have now been on the verge of leaping into the pool three times to save my sinking child.

The four-year-old to life guard/swimming instructor ratio is two and one-half to one. Not bad, but Wee One has this incredible sense of confidence. She honestly believes if she thinks she can do something, she can actually do it. Forget that she does not know how to do it. That's a mere technicality, something with which she has very little concern.

Just this morning, Wee One and the other little munchkins were handed kick boards and encouraged to hold them in front with loose arms to practice their kicking. Wee One was less concerned with holding the thing in front of her as she was precariously crawling on top of it.

As a result, the inevitable happened. While both instructors were occupied with other children, Wee One flipped off the kick board, let go of it and promptly sunk. I kept waiting for her to hit the bottom, kick off from there, and pop back up.

As I said, I kept waiting...waiting...waiting...

No Wee One.

Jumping up, I ran to the edge of the pool and one of the instructors finally looked her way as I started to dive in. She snagged the sputtering and slightly blue Wee One.

She was fine, a bit water-logged, but it hardly dampened her enthusiasm.

Of course, I was far worse for the wear.

Ten minutes later, my bone-headed child did it again. This time, when I noticed she had gone "unnoticed" I made far more noise than the first. My nerves just could not take it.

Again, she was plucked from the depths of the pool.

At the end of class, I inquired of the director as to the number of casualities sustained over the last twenty years from these classes. I was informed not one single child has ever been lost.

In reply, I shook my head and added: "I'm not talking about the children, it's the parents I'm worried about. How many parents have you lost?"

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