I have a son who has to be crow-barred away from his Sony Playstation.
Our latest ploy at trying to involve him in something other than his Playstation was to enrol him at a local gym. Yes, a proper treadmills/weights/rowing machines/all that stuff GYM! All because he expressed a mild interest....
I dropped him off there yesterday and agreed to meet him later at the nearby swimming pool.
When I caught up with him he was in a cafe overlooking the pool, munching a burger.
He was taking some time to eat it - making a right meal of it, you might say - so we watched the swimmers in silence (Jake’s not exactly a talkative type) and eventually I hit upon a topic of conversation.
“Do you know you saved your sister’s life when you were about three years old?”
That snared his interest. “How?”
My story began. She was taking part in her very first swimming lesson. Jake was in the same class, having attended swimming lessons for about six-nine months.
All Jake’s previous lessons had taken place in a toddler’s learning pool, but these particular classes were being held in a diving pool. The pool had a moving floor, and by pressing a button at the edge of the room, the pool could be made shallow/deep according to the requirements.
The instructress started the lesson by telling all these tiny tots to swim across the pool from one side to the other. Then she turned away and started to fiddle with the button that controlled the depth of the pool. She had her back to the children, when her attention was distracted, and she had carried on making the water deeper without looking round at the tiny tots in her class.
Parents were not allowed to sit by the side of this particular diving pool, as they had before. They had to spectate from a room overlooking the pool. It was completely enclosed by glass, and I could see my daughter was in difficulties but without any means of making myself heard by the instructor. I was banging on the glass and shouting, along with several other parents standing there with me, and this silly instructress still carried on talking to God knows who. She didn’t once look round, or even look at the children.
Jake was the hero of the hour. He looked round, saw that his sister was in trouble, and swam back to get her. He stayed by her side and helped her to the edge of the pool. I was almost fainting with gratitude.
Jake interrupted this narrative with a particularly hard stare. “Mum,” he said, awed. “How can I use this for personal gain?”