How To Get The Attention Of Lifeguards

One of the local high schools offers swimming lessons during the summer. Four days a week they offer "open swim" immediately following the lessons for the public to come and use the pool. Today was the third time I took DS & DD to open swim after DD's swimming lesson. I've always wondered just how much attention the teenage lifeguards are paying to the swimmers at times. Well, today I had the chance to find out.

We had been in the pool for about an hour when the incident happened. DS & DD were throwing diving rings out into the pool and then taking turns going out to collect them. They also decided that I needed to dive after a few as well. As I was coming up from collecting 3 of the rings I hear a loud, piercing scream. Of course it was coming from one of my children....DD. I got ahold of her and put her up on the side of the pool as I tried to figure out why she was screaming. At that point I noticed the blood dripping from her lower lip. So I climb out of the pool and walk her into the girls' locker room to check her out and clean her up. A couple of minutes later, after I had gotten the bleeding to stop, one of the life guards came in with a first aid kit to see if DD was OK. As I answered her that DD was fine, all I could think about was that the response time was not very quick. Hopefully it was just due to the fact that I had already gotten to DD and gotten her out of the pool & was obviously taking care of her.

Now you may be wondering just what happened to DD to cause the bleeding & screaming. Evidently DS had gone to get one of the diving rings and in the process kicked DD in the mouth. (He did apologize profusely when DD & I came back to the pool.) Ah, the joys of children. You just never know what will happen next.....

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!