Sinking: The Painfully Frustrating Story of our Boys and Swim Lessons. Part 2

I appreciate everybody reading and tweeting and facebooking the swimming lessons story. To thank you I'll give you even more to read. Well, it's a long-in-coming update, and probably why my blog has ten readers: I'll start something and then never finish. "Hey, today I was visited by Jesus!" and then I never get back to share the results. (BTW, he was totally cool. Stoked on legal weed.)

Quin and Otto are now in their fourth week of swim lessons. Sarah and I have moved on from merely celebrating their participation to cheering them on as they use the kickboards. We don't cheer, actually. At least not out loud. We save it for the night time when we lie in bed, Paco providing his celibacy wedge between us, and chatter with cautious excitement. But during lessons, we sit in the shadows and watch from a distance. If you were to see us you'd judge. "Look at those parents, tapping on their phones and ignoring their children. It's why we're all obese [gay] [pregnant] [fill in your pet issue here.]" That's OK, judge away. I used to judge the very same people as Sarah and I appear to be. But it's who we have to be. If we emote even the slightest, the boys revolt. Little bastards. Beautiful bastards. So Sarah and I sit like Jackie Onassis and her nondescript boyfriend with vague smiles at the passing parade.

We call it our vacation. In the humid warmth of the pool area, the kids' splashes lap at the fading memory of our 2006 trip to Tahiti.

Proof that this is actually happening (we need it for ourselves, too.)Proof that we have some work to do with pictures.
This is huge though! For one, we've reached that all-important phase in parenthood where we don't give a damn. I'd like to offer the case in point where Quin had a major meltdown in a grocery store in Granby. I'll start by saying that the whole ordeal ended in threats of a violent death. Before that though, there was Otto who wanted to ride in one of those grocery carts with the car on the front. We hate those, and want to kill the inventor. OK, I'm getting to the threat of death sooner than I wanted, but as we strolled to the sounds of our screaming children, my gentle wife and I joked about how we'd brutally torture and kill the person who'd  thought another goddamned chunk of noisy plastic would somehow benefit our lives.

But back to the action. Otto said he wanted to ride in a car. Quin said he did not. We were on vacation so I said, "What the heck kids!" Otto silently loaded himself into the petri dish of thousand snotty children (decked out to look like a police car) and we were off. Well, all of us except Quin, who was crying because he wanted to ride in it too. This piece of crap, however, was a one-seater. We offered him an opportunity to take turns, and all kinds of other pansy parent concessions, until we found ourselves in a busy store with a screaming, inconsolable child. Unlike most parents, I enjoy this. Because in my new I-don't-give-a-shitness I like demonstrating to the child that he can cry all he wants, even in a public forum, and I will simply ignore him. Now there are those who might scowl at me and wonder why I'd have a crying kid in a store. To those I would say, "buy condoms." That's right. Don't be mad; be grateful. Rubbers are right over by the pharmacy and when you're done you can even beat the prophylactic against the wall to make sure they're all good and dead.

However, to the others who smile and nod, I say right on sister. You know--we all know--that we have reached a higher plane, where not even the squeals of God's precious cherubs can perturb us. And it is on this plane where Sarah and I sit, tapping on the tools of our dignity's demise, and occasionally chatting the way I imagine the Romneys would at a grandson's fencing tournament.

From those seats though we have had to contain shrieks of glee as the boys get on their kickboards and tadpole around the pool. They are learning the basics of swimming, and all we have to do is not screw it up. We're excited about the prospects, but only quietly and to ourselves.