I hate swimming lessons. I really, really do. Not taking them, mind you. I don’t swim. I can, but as a general rule do not. I have an aversion to public pools because while I’m not a germaphobe, Lord only knows what’s in that water. Anything from kids using it like a latrine, to the staff having just fished a dead and bloated raccoon out of the shallow end with a pool skimmer mere minutes before. Back to my point, I hate swimming lessons.
It’s hot for one. Summer in Southern Illinois is generally brutally hot and humid to a criminal extent. Like can’t escape the heat with the shade or even a mild breeze level brutal. So, if you’re not in the pool come July, shade and breeze or not, you sit there and sweat which is not the most pleasant way to spend a morning. However, seeing as how kids should know how to swim for safety reasons if nothing else, and being the stay at home parent, my attempts to write while cooking in the summer heat are a cruel reality.
There was a change this year that, at least for day one, has made it so much more interesting. Entering through the main gate I saw it; something that made me instantly giddy, like a kid at Christmas. An 8 ½ x 11 inch laminated paradigm shifting sign that read verbatim “ALL Parents must stay in the Concession area”. All caps, underlined, red letters. If that doesn’t get your attention in this age of social media and texting then I don’t know what will.
What incident necessitated the change I do not know but would love to. It must have been serious to force the local parks department to essentially declare war on the helicopter parents. Instead of dozens of them hovering from their lounge chairs mere feet from the edge of the pool, where their Precious Reason For Living (PRFL) are trying to learn, they are now relegated to the concession area. The concession area is dotted with picnic tables and surrounded by a gated four-foot metal fence which put the helicopters anywhere between fifty and one hundred feet away, depending on where they sat in relation to the part of the pool Johnny or Suzie, whoops wrong decade, I mean Jayden or Mackenzie were swimming.
The second the soccer moms saw the signs I could tell it was going to be interesting. This was not the plan. This was not what they signed up for and they were not happy. Worried murmurs permeated the humid morning air, mixing with the moisture and creating a cloud of anxiety that settled over the pool. The lifeguards’ nervous smiles were telling, they anticipated trouble. At this point I should clarify what I mean by ‘soccer mom’. I use the term colloquially. By that I do not mean that their children have to play soccer, it could be any sport or activity. They could be dance moms, baseball moms, band moms, etc. To figure out the specific type of mom, you simply have to look at the stickers opposite the stick family on the back window of their vehicle. In virtually all instances this mode of conveyance will be a minivan, or perhaps a SUV. No trucks or sports cars here, it is function over fun all the way.
A smart phone is compulsory for the soccer mom, as is an almost cult like love for all things Target along with the need for a designer purse. However, if the situation dictates, you would see a beach or diaper bag. Decorum dictates that the bag be customized by embroidery or sparkle vinyl, with their monogram or child’s name. Also, compulsory is the soccer mom uniform: yoga pants or leggings, with a tank top that most often carries a sassy saying, generally about wine, coffee, working out, or a proclamation about their status as a mother. Some variation is acceptable depending on season, for example shorts in lieu of the heat trapping yoga pants in this instance.
Anyway, with no foreknowledge of a specific incident, I was left to deduce the reason for change myself. My working theory was the staff tiring of getting the third degree every time a PRFL gets a half ounce of pool water up his nose and coughs. Or perhaps it the deep seeded psychological need to thrice hourly reapply homemade organic sunscreen. The nostrum concocted by the soccer mom upon seeing a Pinterest meme about the dangers of industrial poison that the rest of the uninitiated use.
Another change this year, just as jarring as the new signage was who manned the sign-in clipboard. In years past it was almost always a woman of small to average stature, but times they are a changin’. In this new era of parental confinement, the parks department had a large, stern black man acting as gatekeeper. When I say large, I mean it. I’m a big guy, 6’1” and pushing 290. The bouncer, which was exactly what he was, had me beat by several inches and several pounds of muscle. It was clear the parks department anticipated trouble and he was just the guy to meet it head on. In addition to making sure that the child’s name was on the list and that they would be placed in the appropriate level of instruction, the bouncer made it clear in no uncertain terms that parents needed to stay in the concession area. This did not sit well with the helicopters.
“No overparenting, no peace!”
Now I understand that language evolves over time. Rather quickly in some eras. especially if you have any contact with a teenage girl, but I was unaware of an alternative meaning to ‘all’. Apparently, there is one, because a hover of soccer moms, (my term for a grouping of helicopter parents) with strollers and custom embordered beach bags in tow, proceeded through the gate and past the bouncer when he stepped away for a moment. The hover landed in a string of lounge chairs adjacent to the shallow end where the youngest of the PRFLs were placed. I looked up from my computer to see the last of them settling in, acting like what they were doing was completely normal. I watched and waited in hopes of seeing the bouncer in action. Within minutes, my patience was rewarded.
If they had been wearing pearls, there would have been much clutching among the hover (I could have imagined it, but I swear that a few of them tried to grasp for phantom pearls when the bouncer told them to move). Even from a distance, the corporate agony of the hover was apparent. Despite the numerous signs and verbal reminder moments before, they all looked shocked. This affront to their ability to over-parent was ostensibly a surprise. As they looked to each other through their oversized sunglasses, almost certainly from Target, the hover’s collective shoulders fell and they meekly gathered their monogramed pool bags and cell phones with shocked countenances and bruised egos.
As the long line of moms crawled along their own mini Trail of Tears, I had to fight back the laughter. I wasn’t sure what I found more humorous, the massive smackdown of their collective hubris or just how offended they all were. ALL couldn’t really mean them, right? They’re important. They pay taxes and the $60 fee damn it! What if there was an emergency, like the need for more sunscreen or a random kraken attack? Who else could possibly save little Jayden from harm if tragedy were to strike in three feet of water (well, except for the trained and certified instructors with no less than a 3:1 ratio of PRFLs to lifeguards … again in three feet of water)?
With the hover now within the confines of the concession area, they had to find places to sit. One mom, clearly annoyed at the situation asked if she could have one of the three remaining seats at the wobbly metal table I was occupying. Being a gentleman, I of course welcomed her to my little corner of schadenfreude and offered her the use of the 1/3 of the table where the patio umbrella blocked the sun. Strangely she declined. ‘Working on her tan perhaps?’ I mused to myself (as a side note, if one is keen on people watching, dark or mirrored sunglasses are a must. It makes the process much easier). But no, the shade did not afford any view of the water what so ever. I made a mental note of the time and figured that she would make it no more than fifteen minutes at the table with the view obstructed. She impressed me though by making it a full seventeen.
Why was the view blocked you ask? The view disappeared when the recently displaced helicopters forewent the tables and lined up along the fence. Many with a baby in one arm and their cell phone in the other, furiously taking pictures from afar. They looked like so many paparazzi fighting for a salable Image of the current celebrity de jour and their new boyfriend cavorting on a beach. This sea of humanity ebbed and flowed like the tide, and soon blocked all view from my table. The forced the mom next to me to abdicate her seat since there was no view of the water to be had, and she clearly couldn’t cope.
I planned on working on my short story, I truly did, but her nervous countenance was too amusing. There was literal nail biting in between nervous glances towards the pool. Was the city getting kickbacks from the local nail salons from all the ruined manicures that were sure to come through their doors? The possibility stuck in the back of my mind as another viable explanation for the rule change
At the halfway point of the day’s lesson, the water was now partially in view as the wall of moms had thinned. When I saw the reason for their disbursement, I was taken aback. A subset of the hover moved to outside of the fence and had taken up residence in a different row of lounge chairs lined up against the fence on the outside of concession area. Clearly outside the fence, they brazenly thumbed their collective noses at the laminated signs. This was the ugly face of anarchy. Though I’m sure a Seattle anti-establishment radical would disagree, to me an anarchist with a Coach purse who reads mom blogs in lieu of Marx, is still an anarchist.
Now, I do not pretend to know what takes a regular law-abiding citizen and makes them a criminal. Perhaps it’s situational when events out of their control for them to break the law. Perhaps as a result being raised in a home run by law breakers and eventually the inexorable pull of both nature and nurture becomes too much for the average person to bear. While others view their disregard for the law as a form of civil disobedience to an unjust system. I believe this is what spurned the hover to take the drastic action that they did. I was half expecting them to tear down the signs and light them ablaze like a 1960’s draft card while chanting “No overparenting, no peace!”
but it was unfortunately not to be.
I looked for the bouncer, gleefully anxious to see his next move, but alas, I was left wanting. He was leaning against the pool house with a stoic countenance and arms crossed over his barrel chest and one foot planted against the wall, watching and waiting. The bouncer had opted to take the path of least resistance. The tear gas and riot shields remained tucked away as he let them have their symbolic victory. I’m sure he took solace in the fact that if they had stayed inside the fence, most of them would actually have been in a closer physical proximity to their PRFLs, but logic overriding emotion is not a hallmark of the helicopter parent.
His reaction, while understandable and probably the high road, was chafing to a law and order type like myself. I wanted to see the hover of scofflaw soccer moms kicked out of their loungers and returned to the confines of the fence. If for no other reason than sheer principle … and my personal enjoyment. As the literal nail biting continued for the last twenty minutes, a feeling of an edgy yet angry acceptance settled over the soccer moms. To my disappointment the remaining score of minutes, while tense, were uneventful.
For tomorrow, I’m considering making a helicopter parent bingo sheet. From my experience the first day I already have a few ideas for spaces.
· B1: Smug mom openly breastfeeding while awaiting a negative look or comment
· I1: Sassy shirt that references wine
· N1: Sassy shirt that references coffee
· G1: Sassy shirt that references both wine and coffee
· O1: Yeti with a sassy saying about coffee on the side
If I do this, I know that I will undoubtedly lose almost twenty-four hours of prime kid occupied writing time this summer. Probably more as I revamp my Bingo sheet every evening, but I think I need to, nay I must do it, if for no other reason that I think it’s funny as hell, thus making my time cooking at a hot metal picnic table worth it.
