Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Money down the drain: swimming lesson edition

Yeah. So I've been sitting in the goddamn pool area bleachers, where the air is conveniently heated to approximately six thousand goddamn degrees for your viewing comfort, for an hour twice a week all effing summer long. This is for the distinctly faked pleasure of oohing and aaahing in pride every time one of my girls keeps her face in the water for more than a tenth of a second, and enduring excruciating small talk from the parents who aren't faking it. The novelty wore off before the experience even started.

Today was their last swimming lesson of the session (thank God). Progress made, in all these weeks: NONE. Zero. They've spent lesson after lesson after lesson being toted around the pool by lovely young women posing as swimming instructors, who coo "GOOOOD JOB!" at them every time they make any kind of motion; their reports indicate, to nobody's surprise, that neither of the girls has accomplished a single thing, and the next level they should register for is the level they've just supposedly finished.

Screw that. Frankly, I'm in the mood to throw them in the deep end and let them figure it out themselves.

3 comments:

  1. I like that you have a category "things that suck". swim lessons for people who do not like to swim or want to swim sucks. been there.

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  2. They love to "swim" and want to learn... it's just taking F O R E V E R. The lessons are great fun. I would just like to see them making tangible progress, though I'm told they are, and I just can't tell.

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  3. I cant believe how many lessons I endured to get my children to a state where I felt if they were found in a deep body of water they would be adept enough to stay afloat long enough to hopefully get rescued or make it back to land. In retrospect I think it was largely a waste of money and they would have developed to the same skill level by splashing about and playing in pools during the summer and I didn't need to endure the sauna and humiliation as they "floundered" helplessly.

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