Monday, April 30, 2007

Swim Lessons

Wow! Did I ever learn a valuable lesson Saturday morning. This is all first time mom stuff that you only mess up on once and then you remember for next time. Saturday was swim lesson registration day for the whole school district. These are the American Red Cross lessons I took as a little person and wanted for Isaiah to learn as well. I think they're a good quality lesson and you can't beat the $10 price.

Registration was to be from 8:30 -10:30 Saturday am. I thought, being it's district wide, I'd get there early at 8am and enjoy the solitude of the truck with my yummy coffee and nicely toasted bagel with cream cheese. I was just going to have a moment to myself until I noticed other vehicles in the parking lot then I'd go into the middle school, hand in my already filled-out registration slip, pay my $10 and know my little person would be all set for swimming lessons. Boy, was I WRONG!

I did get my coffee, however, when I pulled into the parking lot at 8:05 and noticed the mass of vehicles spilling out of the parking lot and onto the side roads I figured a moment to myself was not going to be possible. I said out loud to myself, "No way!". I refused to believe all these cars were here for swim lesson registration, there had to be something else going on today at the middle school. Nope, pretty much every single stinkin' vehicle was there for exactly the same reason I was only they were there MUCH earlier than 8:05. I went into the building and spotted a couple friends with kindergarten children with older siblings i.e. friends who've witnessed this unbelievable site previously, and I asked them if there was a line. They pointed to what I thought was just a group of people milling around waiting for 8:30 when in fact it only appeared to be a milling group because the line circled around and around and around the outside of the gym and the center of the gym as well. There were two lines of people! This was nothing I've seen before, WOW! I told them I thought 8am was early enough and they smiled at me with pity in their eyes and said that some people were there at 5:30am. What???!!!!

Well, I stood in line for half of an hour and not surprisingly you could tell when the newbies walked in as their jaws also dropped to the floor when they realized the spectacle before them was in fact all swim registration parents just like themselves. Thankfully the line moved rather quickly once 8:30 came about. I only had one session that worked for our summer schedule and Isaiah is only going to be in level 1/2 which had about four time slots available in that session, I thought I should be okay, hopefully? Again, I'm amazed that after getting to the middle school almost 30minutes early two of the time slots were filled when it was my turn and Isaiah got the LAST available space for the 8:30 lesson time! Wow!

I walked into the middle school with my jaw dragging on the ground and left the same way! I'm still shaking my head over the whole situation. I guess I know for next year.

3 comments:

Carla said...

Both of my chillers declined lessons this year. I am sorry to have missed such a spectacle!!

kristi noser said...

I remember we all used to get there at 6am and sit in our lawn chairs chatting and having our coffee. Congrats on getting a place on the roster!

Anonymous said...

It has been like that for years. Is there still a group of moms that meet at Dick's for breakfast drinks on the first day of school. That was a fun group.