so i went out in the hallway to wait for natty to deliver the capt so that she could get changed and such. it so happens that the hallway overlooked the gym areas of the ymca, and it further so happens that there are benches set up so that one can watch the action below. so i did. there was a class finishing up of 8-10 year olds bascially being instructed to run around by a young woman with a whistle and a very loud voice.

On one level it was cute, the kids running around and bumping into each other, yelling and screaming, not listening to directions and such. on an other level it looked like a living hell for the insturctor/teacher woman. i imagine she elected to do it, unless this was some sort of community service for a sorority prank or something. as she finished up that class, she told the incoming class to hang out for a few minutes and she came upstairs to user the bathroom/collect her self. It was amazing to see the change in her expression from leaving the ‘cleints’ to come up the stairs. from cheerful to rageful, maybe she hates stairs, but i think it was working all day with kids. just a guess.

so when she got back she started roll call. the list of kids read like the short list of most popular names in all the name books we looked at. there was jack, tyler, andrew, gavin, michael, some other kid and isabella. oh and eli, he was late-and harvey was a no show.

What was interesting was that the mothers of the kids didn’t leave the gym, i woudl have thought the point was to dump the kids off and get a little me time or something, but instead the all sat on teh side lines. one had some sort of fold out key board for her pda, but the rest just sat there and watched. the instructor, coach katie as she introduced her self, ran through the names several times, which apparenltly worked as pmneumonic (johnny) device, b/c apparently i remember all but one. as soon asa athe kids were literally more than arms reach from their mothers it all started…the started jumping around spinning, tripping, dancing. poor jack pranced around like a freak. I was instantly embarrased for him, and for myself, b/c i’m pretty sure i did the same thing the other day err when i was his age. of course, being 8-10, he didn’t give a fuck. when the captain runs around spinning and doing fake round house kicks and yelling “mwahaaa”–will i stop him and tell him he looks like a dork? i suppose that’d prolly give him a complex? hmm, i need to come up with a strategy for this shit. .

to warm up the kids, coach katie had them run from one end of the basketball court to the other. well, after she took 5 mins to get them to line up spread out across one of the ends of the court…man what a hassel. It appeared that young gavin had a thing for isabella, as he felt the need to be bascially right on top of her the whole time. ah young love.

so the kids ran down to one end of the court no problem, the stopped waited for their cue and then ran back. on the way back, andrew bumped into someone, i dunno who…and did the classic kid “stop everything, ponder for a second, process the pain directive from the face, confirme the pain, and then freakout”. i guess he was smacked in the nose somehow, b/c at first he was just sorta crying, then he saw blood and fucking flipped out–shrieking like nothing i’ve heard before. i would have expected there to be a chain reaction of emotion, but instead the other kids just sorta looked, and one laughed. instantly andrew’s mom was on the scene instantly soothing him, trying to stop the god awful shrieks. coach katie seemed put out by the whole thing, she retrieved some tissues, and then sent the kids down and back and told them to keep busy as she went to go wash her hands for safety reasons.

it was at this point that young eli arrived. decked out in a red sweater vest, it was sort of obvious that eli might have some problems with the sportive life (this coming from me). when coach katie got back, she sent them down and back once again. eli lined up wiht the other kids, and when the cue was given, he promptly tripped and fell, but to his credit, he didn’t freak out, he got up and just kept going. he fell again on the way back, and then ask coach katie if he could just walk the rest of the way. eli’s mother took a seat on the sidelines–i noticed that she was younger than the other mothers, dressed in much hipper clothes. instantly i had created her story–she’s the 2nd wife of a wealthy executive or attorney, eli is their only child, and is many years younger than the husband’s kids from the first marriage. eli has an xbox, playstation, and an xbox 360 at home. kis like eli, b/c he good shit at his house, even if he can’t play kickball very well.

as i sat there, i was transported back to this afterschool ymca sponsored class thing i was in when i was in 5th grade. it was the same sort of thing, though the early 80’s version of it. there were no mothers on the sidelines when you, say get the wind knocked out of you and then pummled in teh head by rubber gym balls hurled at 100 mph by virgil the kid that repeated 3rd grade 2 times, while playing dodgeball. no, you just got laughed at.

but it was totally different, b/c with that in mind i was looking at the scene as a parent, not just as an adult (ahem) watching kids playing. i can imagine it’ll be hard not to rush out when the capt gets clocked and gets a bloody nose. it’ll be even harder to kick him in the nuts while he’s bleeding to show him something that really hurts. (kidding natty, i’m kidding). you always hear how the first day of school is harder on the parents than on the kids, i never could understand that crap before, i’m starting to get an idea of how that could be true now. weird.

somebody help me, i’m becoming a parent.

just to leave you on a high note.

poop!

so try to stay with me here people, this will be a long one i think…

i took yesterday off b/c natty signed the capt up for swimming lessons. you see the boy loves the bath time, so we figured he’d love the swim time. so natty did the research and leg work to find lessons for him, you know the whole “mommy and me” type thing. she signed him up for lessons at a ymca a coupla towns over, and err yesterday was the first one.

so to help her out with they boy while she changed and also to capture the event on various forms of electronic media. so since i didn’t feel like juggling clients and the boy, i just took the day off. oh i had big plans too, a trip to ikea, clean and recaulk the bathtub..perhaps a run ot the local dumping station (not a code for anything, an actual trip to the dumping station).

well like all things planned, it didn’t work out. i slept in a bit, henry developed this weird cough, and by the time the baby went down for his nap, it wasn’t worth going to ikea. so i did some work-(some day off) and worked on the site and ended up changing the wiper blades on the subie. that’s about it. oh well.

so we headed off to ymca for the boy’s big adventure.

the y is like pretty much every ymca i’ve ever been to, i suspect that all of them were built with in the same week in 1981, but i can’t prove it. at any rate natty took the capt in to the ladies locker room to get both of them ready, and i headed through the men’s locker room to the pool area, cameras and all.

i was happy to see that there were other clothed people in the pool area, mothers and such watching kids in classes. soi found a spot on a bench and sat down. i then realized that it was 92 degrees adn so humid that water was dripping off the ceiling on my head. after a while natty came out with the boy, and you could tell he was terrified. i dunno if it was being with out a shirt in public, or the humidity or the 18 kids screaming and yelling and splashing around. i have my suspicions, but i’m not sure which.

aside 1: it’s amazing how i’ve changed since the boy made his arrival. before i just didn’t like loud people b/c they were, well loud–now i want to kill them b/c they’re loud, because loud scares baby, and scared baby cries, and crying baby makes me have to stop baby from crying. i’d like to think it’s some sort of protection instinct, but i think it’s more that i dont’ want to have to try to get the baby to stop crying, i dunno i’m all soft and mushy like that.

anyway. the capt didnt’ cry, he just sorta clung to natty, looking around like a scared, err baby. she brought him over to me, so that she could go do the pre pool shower thing, and move the stroller into the swim area (where else you gonna put the baby while you’re changing?). so at that point we had a full on car load of baby goods in teh pool area. excellent.

so the boy then clung ot me, looking around as if he was about to melt down, but not actually melting down. my mind started racing to the “he was a happy baby until, hmm around 7 months, then all of a sudden, everything freaked himout. well at least he’s rich now after he wrote his memiors on going to rehab on pluto–oh it’s all the rage now, go to teh end of the solar system to get clean, i saw it on oprah, she looks good for 98, don’t you think?” happy thought’s i’m prone to having.

eventually a swim instructor came over to talk to me and the boy–it turns out she was just a sub for the instructor, she had a lacrosse game so she couldn’t make it. it further turned out that the capt was the only one in his class–so they wanted to merge him in to another class. I pulled the typical husband/father “well my wife is incharge of all the scheduling”/i don’t want to deal with you angle, and the girl said ok. and went away.

natty came over, and the time came to get in the water. and so they did. the capt didn’t cry, he didn’t smile, he didn’t do anything, except cling to natty and look around like “what the fuck is all this crap and why am i here in the middle of it”

i guess i had visions of him frollicking around in the water like during bath time. no dice. so for the next 20 mins or so, the poor instructor tried to get him to smile, and he just sorta sat half in half out of the water. looking like we were traumatizing him.

then, they got out and natty took him to the locker room to change.

i hauled all the stuff, stroller included, through the men’s shower, lockerroom and hallway out to the main hallway that overlooks the main gym areas. sorta liek the landing to the 2nd floor of the brady bunch house, but well all athletic like.

hmm too long, time to break in to another post.

yeah so we got this last weekend, and i kept forgetting to scan it in. a couple thoughts:

1) santa looks evil
2) natty mentioned at the time, and i poopooed, that the image was over exposed. i thought i could fix it with picassa, well you see i couldn’t. i don’t have a working copy of photoshop anymore, but if any of you experts out there can help a father out, uh, please do.

merry fuckingn xmas.