Swimming lessons, session three. This is just a reminder that three weeks have gone by and I have yet to begin writing my masterpiece. Although, this morning I felt a huge sense of elation while watching my young crocodile bob, jump, slide and blow bubbles while one of the little boys in her class refused to get into the water. I giggled under my breath at his fifteen fits in twenty minutes, so relieved that it wasn’t my child sobbing on the deck and my sweat dripping down my back, a position I have been in countless times at the very same pool. The mother of the boy was very pregnant, just as I was in the fall and was in no mood for any nonsense. Kids must sniff this out because he would take two steps towards the water and seven steps back. She tried everything in her bag of tricks to coax him into the water beginning with the gentle stroking of his arm, getting down to his level (not an easy task when you are eight months pregnant) and rationalizing with him. She got close a couple of times but predictably, in the end, she lost her cool shouting, “Quit acting like a baby and get in the pool!” timed perfectly during the pause between songs playing for the adult aerobics class so everyone in the facility could hear the first round and the bellowing echo that followed. I give the mother credit for not packing it in right then and there. The thirty minute class was twenty minutes in and Bobby had yet to get a drop of water on him. She made it as far as the change room door, I was then interrupted by the older gentleman sitting next to me who inquired, “which kid is yours?” None of your business pervert, I felt like saying. I pointed in the direction that Ellie’s group was in and said, “She’s over there” wondering if it is generational or otherwise but a man in his twenties wouldn’t dare ask me which kid was mine for fear I would have him labelled a pedophile and have him escorted out of the building. I proceeded to get back to the soap opera that was unfolding right before my eyes. At this point, the boy began to believe that his mother was no longer bluffing about taking him home and stripping him of every toy he had ever loved, as she should have threatened the first five minutes of his episode and began to walk back toward the water. He choked on some tears, phlegm, took one kick on the flutter-board and class was dismissed.