FatherHood SL

Self consciousness goes out the window when you’re the parent of young child. Out shopping in your track pants and pajama top? No worries. Snot or spit-up on your suit in a Zoom meeting? No biggie. No shower for the second day in a row? Tomorrow is a new day. But sometimes a situation unfolds that leaves you so mortified your life changes at that very moment. For me, it happened at our community pool with my son.

My son loves swimming (or splashing really) and our trip to the local community pool began just like any other. We had recently started potty training like a duck to water, but I still persuaded him to wear a swim diaper under his swimsuit. This was a safety net in case any accidents reared their ugly head. A few minutes in, I (and the other parents and children in the family section of the pool) realized how imperfect those swim diapers really were.

Anyone who has watched, in cringeworthy horror, the infamous Caddyshack movie ‘Chocolate bar in the pool’ scene can perhaps feel some empathy. I can see the wide-eyed panic in the eyes of my twoyear-old boy. And, his panic is contagious! I too immediately become red-faced as a widening circle of floating brown particles surround us in the public pool we were happily playing in moments before.

Now, the fun is definitely over—this is a code-red situation every parent dreads when out in public with their little ones. And this code-red is actually a code-brown. It felt like it unfolded in slow motion. But, unlike that fictional incident from the 1980 comedy classic, it wasn’t a single, chunky log that was floating in the water, more a widening circle of murky brown flecks expanding around us. My heart rate skyrocketed as what was unfolding dawned on me. Collective panic grew as the brown ring encircling us continued to expand.

I locked eyes with an open-mouthed and disgusted mother a few feet away as I scrambled to the pool’s edge. All I could say to her was a shame-filled matter-of-fact “I’ve got a situation here—please get out and tell everyone else to get out, too. And please let the lifeguards know.”

With that, I left the messy carnage behind me, scooping up my son in one arm—a brown and yellow trail still trickling down his legs—and dashed as quickly as I could to the pool’s only joint family/disabled bathroom stall. All the while still trying to reassure my young son he hadn’t done anything wrong so he didn’t feel any sense of shame. I didn’t have the inclination to look back at the destruction we’d caused. But that wasn’t when the horror ended.

Inside the dual-purpose stall, I tried my best to calmly, but efficiently strip my boy down without smearing last night’s dinner anywhere further than it already had. Stretchy shower hose in hand, I valiantly tried to clean things up, but in my toddler’s eyes, it was a fun new game! I’d aim the hose at him and he’d shoot to the left. Then to the right. Then in between my legs—all with a slippery floor underfoot and mucky swim bottoms with brown splotches in and around the central drain. My temper was being tested like never before when there was an impatient knock on the door. What now?! I stopped in my tracks, almost disbelieving the sound I had just heard. With my stress levels through the roof, I waited in horror. Then, with an exhausted, yet excitable and still very wet (and if I’m honest possibly not completely clean) toddler buzzing around my ankles— I heard it again. This time the knock was followed by an impassioned request for me to hurry up, as the person on the other side of the door needed access as quickly as possible. texas travel and beyond

“In a few minutes!” I blurted out, knowing full well I was going to be much longer than that. After a scramble to get dry and packed up—and bit of back-and-forth between myself and the faceless person on the other side of the door—we were finally ready to leave. As I unlocked the door, all I could offer the person waiting was a “Sorry, I had a bit going on in there.” I kept my eyes glued to the ground as I rushed towards the exit door, not wanting to witness the aftermath of our incident.

Then the nightmare was over. I was a shell of a man. My boy, like kids tend to do, seemed completely unaffected, skipping down the pathway to our parked car and singing to himself as my mind started to compute what had unfolded in the last half hour or so. “Can we go swimming again one day?” he asked ever-so-innocently as I loaded him into the car. “One day,” I replied. As much as I want to encourage his excitement at taking to the water once again, I’m sh**ting bricks (as they say) about the next time. Hopefully he won’t be once we’re back in the water.