Skippin Swimmin

Ever had one of your kids really look forward to doing something, only to blow it first chance they got? That happened with Trey yesterday, his first day of practice for the YMCA swim team.

The morning began the usual way, he got dressed, ate breakfast, got his teeth brushed and shoes on and fed the fish. But, this morning before he went out for the bus, we took some time to put a bag together with his swim trunks, a towel, his goggles, shampoo/body wash, a plastic bag for his wet stuff and a Zip-Loc with some strawberry Mini-Wheats in it for an after swimming snack. We stuffed that bag of swim team gear into his backpack, went over the routine of "Make sure you walk to the Y and don't take the bus home" about a thousand times, and off he went. Swim team practice got done at 4:00, so of course, this was the day I ran late at work. As soon as I finished I raced over to the Y as fast as I could, hoping that no well-meaning child abductor had conned my little guy into leaving with him. I had told him to wait for me on the bench in the entry way so he could see me when I drove up. So, imagine my surprise when I drive up and find NO TREY! Figuring my rather slow-to-move son may very well still be in the locker room, I went into the Y, opened the men's locker room door a crack (in order to avoid seeing any other 'cracks') and yelled into the men's room for him. No answer. Great. Now what? Maybe he was watching the more advanced swimmers practice, so I headed over to the pool observation area. I scanned the area for my scrawny blue-eyed baby, but no dice. Trying to push back thoughts of some scraggly guy with a 7 day beard and a jacket with more cigarette burns than filling dragging my kid out the door, I calmly asked at the front desk if anyone had seen Trey. Have you ever asked a stranger if they've seen your kid? You get that look like "Why don't you know where your own kid is?" and feel like the world's most incompetent parent because you didn't install an ESP GPS system between yourself and your child shortly after birth? Luckily Trey had introduced himself earlier at some point, because both of the girls behind the desk said "Oh, TREY! He's probably in the Teen Room." The what? The Teen Room, I learned, is a young boy's paradise. A room with a dance-pad video game system, exercise bikes and a sofa set up around a TV with kids shows on it, a foosball table, and other fun things for young kids and teens to do while they're waiting for their parents or whomever to come pick them up. This room proved to be Trey's Achille's heel that day, in that he was too weak to resist it's call. He went in there before swim team practice, ate his snack, then promptly forgot the entire reason he had even gone to the YMCA to begin with, and spent the entire 2 hours he was there in the Teen Room.

Rather than defy the laws of physics and hurl the kid into the stratosphere, Trey is grounded from video games at home and everywhere else except school, TV at home and everwhere else except school for the rest of the week. Or until he can remember to swim first, then go play in the Teen Room when he's all ready to get picked up! Apparently this was effective, as today I actually saw him practicing with the team in the pool, and was ready to take him home when he ambled out of the locker room. I think I'm gonna like Trey being on the swim team! Go CFY!