Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go In The Water....

This evening DS had a swimming lesson. He takes private lessons at the local university's aquatic center. We have resorted to this method as other, more common methods of learning to swim have failed due to his extreme fear of deep water. I must say, he has done extremely well over the past several months and made great strides in his comfort level in the water, and thus is getting much closer to being able to actually swim on his own. Most of the time when we are at the aquatic center it is a relatively uneventful time.....just a swimming lesson, showering & changing afterwards, and he's done. Not the case this evening.....

DS had only been in the water about 5 minutes when there was a bit of a commotion at the other end of the shallow area of the pool (it's an Olympic-size pool so the shallow area is huge). Soon one of the other instructors was walking over to the near side of the pool with a young child. As she approached the parents sitting in front of me she says, "He threw up in the pool." OK, this is not what you want to hear when your own child is in that same pool! I immediately called out to James to get out of the pool (it's amazing how quickly he moved when I said that!). His instructor came over to see what was going on as well, and then she immediately had the life guard on duty call on the walkie-talkie to the pool manager to report the incident. At this point they both cleared everyone else out of the pool. I sent DS off to shower & change as this meant there would be no more pool time this evening! Clean-up efforts began while he was in the dressing room and it was rather amusing to watch all of these childless college students dealing with this issue (at least from this mom's point of view!).

I think this will go on record as the shortest swimming lesson of all time. And I am relieved that it wasn't due to anything one of my own children did!