Into (and Quickly Out of) The Deep

You always hear the stories about how some kid sees a poop lying on the bottom of a pool (the Babe Ruth candybar in Caddyshack scene comes to mind) or finds one floating on the surface and quicker than the beach evac when the first shark is seen in JAWS, the pool is cleared, people screaming in horror as they flee.

But you never think it's going to be your child who does the deed. 

Jordan is starting her third year on the Dry Diggins Dolphins swim team. And in the second week of practice every year, there's a BBQ picnic/family swim welcome party. The city pool is opened to all Dolphins swimmers (4 yrs old to 18 yrs old so we are talking a hell of a lot of people) - and their families. 

Sawyer has fallen in love with swimming lately, and was so excited to swim in the pool Jordan gets to be in three days a week. So excited, in fact, that he didn't want to get out of the pool when he first felt the urge to poop. Tom and I were chatting as he "rested" on the submerged pool steps, and suddenly he was next to Tom, urgently pulling on his arm and saying "I have to poop bad" and nearly crying, and as our eyes met and Tom swooped him up, he emitted a little cry and a cloud of brown swooshed from under the too-big legs of his little shortie wetsuit, clouding the turquoise water. A first time for everything.

It was already a bit of a painful event for me - putting on my bikini (a regular suit sure as heck doesn't fit my 5 months pregnant belly) and walking past a hundred and fifty people and into the pool. Then I got to try and be discreet about heading to the nearest teenage lifeguard (about 6 feet away) and telling her my son had just created a vast toxic wasteland out of what was a moment earlier a major fun zone complete with twisting water slide and relay races and chock full of happy, jubilant children of all ages. Nothing discreet about how she immediately brought her whistle to her pouty teenage lips, blew for all she was worth and yelled something like "Poop in the pool! Everyone out!" Ten teenage lifegaurds effectively evac'd the pool in moments whereupon everyone cast their eyes about for the culprit who was, at that moment, showering in the men's room with his papa and crying about wanting to get back to swimming. 

It takes thirty minutes to effectively reach chlorine levels sufficient to kill all fecal borne microbes (and blind small children and bleach all swimsuits). And thirty minutes for us to pack up, peel a 6 yr old reluctantly from where she has plastered herself happily against the still-warm pool deck concrete on her belly next to another six year old girl and be more than halfway home on the windy foothill roads with two tired children in tow, tiny swimming pool in my body still occupied by the lone swimmer there. 

On the way out a couple friends jokingly asked us something like "Jeez, haven't you taught your kids the right place to go?" And Tom and I, lacking the ability to lie, sheepishly confessed that it was indeed one of our children who had cleared the pool. Mortified, the woman stuttered that she was trying to be funny. "Oh, sadly it is funny," I said. "Or it will be in a few years." We can only hope that Sawyer's ability to get people to move en masse in years to come will come from his motivating them in some social or political cause. He seems to have the necessary charisma. Just needs a little work on his impetus.