This morning, early, my two older boys were signed up to compete in a swim meet. They swim for a local team which recently became the number-one-ranked youth team in the entire nation. This has absolutely nothing to do with Mack and Aidan. It is based mostly on the “senior swimmers,” the teenagers who compete in national events. But the organization is quite a thing to behold, and many of the best young swimmers in the area are a part of it.

Mack and Aidan pretty much just swim for themselves, trying to beat their own best times from previous meets. It is good exercise during the winter, and good practice for their summer season, when they swim with the neighborhood team and have the chance to place much higher.

Knowing that they probably wouldn’t win any ribbons, I felt guilty dragging them out of their beds at what seemed like the crack of dawn this morning. We’ve been experiencing a cold snap here, and the temperature was in the teens – which makes us all want to put on bathing suits, right?

But we had a committment to be at the pool, so I roused Mack and told him he could just wear his pajamas into the car if he wanted to. Then I tried for a couple of minutes to wake Aidan, who when he finally woke, sat straight up, looked at me and said, “Now all the letters in my brain are gray!”

Which is one of the more interesting things one of my kids has ever said to me; I actually came downstairs and wrote it down right away, so I wouldn’t forget exactly what he said. What letters? Letters like A-B-C, or like letters to Santa? What color were they before I woke you? I wanted to know more, but we were late. (We’re always late.)

So we drove to the meet, and I hustled them off (late) to their coaches and found six inches of free space on one of the packed bleachers. I picked up my library book and sighed, feeling kind of guilty that my guys weren’t snuggled warm in their beds. (Like their Dad. But that’s another blog entry altogether.)

As I sat there, I listened to two Swim Dads having a loud conversation in front of the bleachers. Tall Swim Dad was saying, “Oh, I know. I get that too. Ever since she injured her shoulder, every little time she has pain it’s, ‘My shoulder! I can’t swim!’ And a lot of times it isn’t even her shoulder, it’s [holds up arm to demonstrate] like her trapezoid (sic) or her elbow. And I’m like, ‘You have a choice. You can decide you are injured and freak out about it. Or you can decide you’re going to push through, and just get out there and swim. Either way, I can tell you, you are going to get in that water.’”

I was thinking that this guy was pretty over the top. But Other Swim Dad was nodding and listening. Tall Swim Dad went on for a while, as I half listened, about how they still didn’t know what high school his daughter was going to choose (I thought, “She’s not in high school yet and he talks like this!”), and she wanted to go to this one, but he liked this other one because they had a pool right there on site.

Suddenly I heard a child say, “Daddy…” and I looked up to see a girl approaching Tall Swim Dad. He had a quick conversation with her, reminded her to really “work her dolphin” on her flip turn, and sent her on her way. I kid you not, the girl was 45 inches tall. She could not have been older than six, or maybe a really, really petite seven. She is probably in first or second grade.

My jaw dropped. I wanted to grab her and stick her in one of my kids’ gigantic swim bags (she would have fit) and smuggle her out of there. But she probably would have screamed and, really, who needs the hassle.

I felt way, way less guilty about my parenting choices for the rest of the morning.