Swimming Lessons

Before the sewing marathon Jack started swimming lessons. We didn't think he'd learn much, just wanted him to have fun and not hate lessons like S and I both did. I hated them so much that I was excited when I got an ear infection and couldn't swim for awhile. I was afraid of being bitten by a blue ringed octopus.
So fun was on the agenda and was mostly what we had. I also had an excellent tricep and bicep workout from hefting Jack out of the water and into the air, which was Jack's favourite trick. Lessons seem to have changed since I was little (you know back in my day) and Jack's involved singing and games. The kids ran along floating rubber mats on the water, collected plastic sea critters, played aquatic basketball and waded through 'seaweed'. The class was a mix of people. There were three well dressed country wives with their suitably named blonde daughters, another Jack always clad in wet and clingy underpants (I hope he was toilet trained), two friendly mums and a very unfriendly mum with her unfriendly mother and her unfriendly child. Brrr.
All the kids reacted differently to the water, some loved it and others cried. Jack had a bet each way depending on his mood and how much sleep he'd had beforehand.
One day I turned up and a Mum remarked that we mustn't have got the memo. Memo? I thought and then realised. All the mums had been replaced by WDCW grazier husbands. And the change in the blonde princesses was amazing. Trying it on? Big time. Tantrums and tears and the Dad's looked exhausted. Then they got competitive. One's daughter put her head under water, so another had to dunk his daughter. To say she was surprised was an understatement. And so it went on, with the little blonde princesses looking increasingly more startled by the second.
The other Jack was always accompanied by his father, a most unfortunate man who always referred to our Jack as 'that little girl'. Finally I could bear it no longer and I told him Jack was a boy. He told me that he had the same problem, but wouldn't that make you more circumspect about making that mistake? Then the week after he called Jack a little girl again. Sigh.
So after five weeks Jack finished. He can't swim as such but he can do the monkey and the crocodile and likes going to the pool. Success.