Roughly a year ago Shirley and I decided it was time to enroll our children in swimming lessons.  There is a legendary swim instructor in the West Michigan area who goes by the monicker the “Swim Nazi”,  not sure if her swimming suit has swastikas on it, but the word on the street is she just tosses kids into the pool and hopes that their survival instinct is strong enough to get them to the ladder.  Shirley and I’s parenting style is not suited to intentionally inflicting trauma upon our  children even if it is for the noble cause of teaching them to swim.  Besides, we have friends who went to the swim nazi and indicated that it wasn’t for them.  Our children are quite a bit more soft than our friend’s children both figuratively  and literally (Rudolph and Winston have beer bellies, but instead of beer causing their unusually large stomach it’s actually candy)  our  friend’s children resemble the ethiopian kids you see with flies swarming around their incredibly large heads from the Sally Struthers commercials when placed next to our chubsters.

So with the Simming Nazi out as a possible instructor we had very few options.  Ultimately we decided to enroll our children in Goldfish swim school so that we had an excuse to get them out of the house on weekly basis interacting with their peers in what seemed to be a semi athletic endeavor.  Little did I know what torture taking my kids to swimming lessons would inflict upon me every week, both physically and mentally.  First of all, swimming lessons are at 6:30.  6:30 would seem like a perfectly reasonable time to have swimming lessons, and every Wednesday I always feel like I have more then enough time to get home from work, feed my kids, and get out the door to swimming lessons.  However,  6:20 seems to sneak up on me like the alcohol in a shot of fireball does, how did I get this intoxicated this fast?  Damn you Fireball!  I find my self scrambling and yelling at my kids to get a move on because we are going to be late.  The swimming lessons are only a half hour so you really don’t get much bang for the buck if your kids stroll in at 6:40.  Furthermore, what we pay for these swimming lessons, and will be paying for these swimming lessons, could get them through a semester of community college or even a two year degree from a reputable trade school, so we really need them in the water for every possible second to justify the expense.

Fortunately we procrastinated long enough that we didn’t enroll our kids at too young of an age, and what I mean by too young of an age is when they make you as a parent get in the water with your kids.  Not sure what the benefit of having a kid who can’t even walk try to learn how to swim (float) is, but more power to those parents who want to be on top of things.  Getting in the water with your kids would only be minimally more awful than what goldfish parents go through bringing their kids to their instructor and picking their kids up from their instructor.  Goldfish is set up so that the pool area is cordoned off from the “viewing” area by a glass wall.  The pool area is kept at a temperature that would make hell seem frigid and typically I immediately get swamp ass when I enter the pool area to drop my kids off.  The whole set up is similar to where they do the dolphin shows at Shedd’s Aquarium.

Winston at one point had a kid in his class who by the way he reacted to the pool water must have thought it was sulfuric acid.  The kid would not get into the water, and the instructor basically had to pull him into the pool to get him to participate (freak out).  So, the instructor would be in the water holding her hands out encouraging the child to get in, and the child would resist the entire time until finally the instructor just pulled the child in to the water.  This is similar to what happens in public schools on a daily basis.  The children who are dumb and or disruptive get the most attention, keeping the teachers from focusing on the other kids who actually have a chance at succeeding.  Likewise, Winston had been progressing well in his swimming lessons but now was taking a back seat in his instruction to a kid who was about as likely to jump into the pool as a cat would into a bathtub full of water.

While my two kids have progressed through the Goldfish Hierarchy and seem to be doing well and enjoy going to their swimming lessons, the time spent getting the kids out of their lessons and into the group shower and cleaned off are the worst five minutes of my week.  They call the parents in when there are five minutes left in the lesson so that they can tell each parent how their child is doing and where the child is still deficient.  “Winston did good this week, he really is doing a good job of kicking and pulling, but we really need to work on that back roll.”  Meanwhile, I am sweating through my clothing and can barely hear a word because I’m old and there are a bunch of kids screaming in the background.  The instructors always seem to be real upbeat and positive regardless of a child’s proficiency in the pool.  I really would have liked to hear what the instructor said about the kid in Aiden’s class who had the buoyancy of a stone.  “He was a little hesitant at first, but towards the end there he was only clinging to me hard enough to draw a little bit of blood, I think he is making terrific progress.”  What I would have told the kids mom is “He is the biggest pansy I have ever seen, if it was my kid I would bring him immediately to the swim Nazi to get him where he needs to be, he’s so bad I’m surprised he hasn’t already drown trying to drink a glass of water.”

Even more painful than leaning down and trying to hear the instructor is putting your kid in the group showers to rinse the pool water off them.  My youngest will typically try to take his suit off, “No! No! you have to keep your suit on your weiner is way too small to let everyone here see it!”  The showers are set up in a row along one  wall and the showers only go for 15 seconds and then they automatically shut off so you have to continually hit the button to keep the water going, and every time you hit the button you risk getting sprayed by the shower.  On top of that there are a cluster of kids and parents trying to get their kids in and out of there causing everyone to feel a bit more anxious and tense than they should have to feel.

This past Wednesday I managed to get in and out of the pool area without having to take any anxiety medication but upon making it into the changing room I discovered a bit of a problem.  I was in such a hurry when I arrived that I didn’t investigate the smell I encountered when changing my kids into their swimsuits.  However, when putting their clothes back on I found a skid mark in my youngest child’s undies that was so bad I though a monster truck had done a burnout in his drawers.  He insisted on putting his underwear back on but I made him go commando for our weekly post swimming lesson trip to get frostys and head home.

What troubles me the most about this whole goldfish experience is the fact that my kids swim like dolphins when they are at goldfish, ok maybe not dolphins but they are doing much better than I had ever expected, but you drop them into any other body of water and they swim about as efficiently as someone with no arms or legs.  I have no idea why they are only able to swim at a high level when they are at goldfish, but it greatly depreciates the usefulness of swimming lessons when they are only able to swim in one particular place and would drown to death any other place they are attempting to swim.  Furthermore, my kids and Shirley have grown so accustom to the weekly lessons that it is hard to see a scenario where they are no longer taking swimming lessons at Goldfish.  I guess that would be the upside to using the swim nazi’s services, I”m sure there is an end in sight when you take swim lessons with her, as opposed to an indefinite program where you are being drained of money and your very sanity watching your children graduate from one class to another never quite reaching a proficient enough level of swimming to be free of the bonds of gold fish swim school.  Maybe having my kids haplessly tossed in the deep end of the pool wasn’t such a bad idea.