Those Tsunamis of mine have had me at one pool or another once a week for about five years now. They still can’t swim.
We’ve done one on one lessons, we’ve done lessons in the pool at home, we’ve done lessons in other people’s pools at their home, we’ve done indoor heated pools and outdoor freezing pools.
The ‘swim school’ we are currently taking lessons with is a nightmare. Held in a noisy, crowded, noisy, hot, noisy city ‘leisure centre’, the kids are totally lost in an Olympic-sized indoor pool. I have to stay glued to the Badoo’s side while the bigger kids have their lessons. I fear I will lose her and… she can’t swim. None of them can swim.
Oh, they can paddle around confidently enough. Jump in and surface fast enough that I don’t bust a hernia every time. Make their way around the pool faster than the speed of light – there, there, no over there. Dive down after a penny and rise triumphant.
But none of them can do that bloody over-arm stroke that seems to be the pass out of the weekly torture that is swimming lessons.
So there we are, week after blessed week. I’m either worrying far too much about being mistaken for Moby and getting harpooned on sight, or worrying about the Badoo dying from chlorine-induced asphyxiation in the heavy pool air, or worrying about the fact that it’s been years and years and years and still they can’t swim.
A cry goes up: a poo has been found in the deep end.
Then there’s the whole wet thing. Wet kids, wet towel, wet shoes, wet dive rings, wet floors. You bundle them all out of the wet pool into the shower to make them wetter, slosh some soap here and there in an effort to drown out the chlorine smell that clings all week, dry them with their wet towel and struggle them into their wet clothes. One kid always gets a foot caught in their damp pant leg and goes down, sloshing all over the tinea-ridden mouldy cement bathroom floor. Oh the joy.
It ain’t over. You then need to make your way out the front door past the canteen without having to buy anything. NO, not ice cream, it’s 10 degrees outside! God, even the money you are handed back in change at the canteen is wet.
The door whizzes open and you fall out into the freezing cold night, gulping in the fresh air. Your clothes immediately turn to ice, merging with the ice cream dripping down the front of the kids’ clothes.
The swimming lessons. The bloody swimming lessons.
How do you go with the swimming lessons at your place?
[Image (ironic image!) via weheartit]