I always liked the way the Y segmented the various levels of aquatic proficiency. You start out as a Polliwog, graduate to Guppy, leap-frog your way across an ocean’s worth of non-Tretapod Chordates and, at least in my day, arrived at the decidedly predatory and much hipper types like "Barracuda" or "Shark"…although I think nowadays its something much friendlier.
The local Y offers swimming lessons and both my kids are signed up.
Matthew, of course, is well on his way to becoming a Navy Seal; but Tim is still a Polliwog and probably will be for some time...perhaps his entire life...because Tim likes putting his face in the water about as much as Melvin, the house cat.
The Y is very understanding and lets me get in the water with Tim. Aside from the instructors, I’m the only adult out there and my function is to keep Tim on task and in the pool.
He does not like the deep end at all and gets real nervous when the instructor has him swim in any direction heading toward that menacing line where the bottom drops away and the water gets decidedly darker.
Today, the instructor announced that the class would "choo choo" (two hands on the rim of the pool, shuffling along) to the deep end. This is the point in class when Tim announces with noticeable panic, "The Deep end is closed! Deep end is cloooosssed!". Well, it wasn't; but as far as Tim is concerned it is…and will be forever.
As the Polliwog choo-choo train pulled out of the station and headed toward the deep end, Tim and I stayed way back in the sunny 3-foot section where he and I worked on getting him to float on his back. It took some getting used to because Tim is a Feet-Firmly-On-The Ground type of guy who expected The Deep to materialize in the shallow end of a Central Ohio YMCA and swallow him up at any minute, but I think that he eventually liked the sensation of floating. Sort of.
Once he stopped flailing around and relaxed a bit, I thought about the Wednesday, Nov 28th edition of the "Metro & State" section of the Columbus Dispatch, which trumpeted:
Reprieve for Autism Aid
"The administration of Gov. Ted Strickland announced yesterday that it will temporarily halt a plan to alter Medicaid billing rules that effectively would have cut off services to thousands of autistic children."
The ax was scheduled to fall January 1st, but now is pushed back till 4/11.
We all breathed easier when my wife read that off to me over the phone. It seemed that the offerings of distraught parents’ tears and earnest pleas of caregivers to the State might have been heard. The State is still not sure what to do about their autistic charges, but at least our collective agony bought some time.
I watched the instructor and the other Minnows, Guppies and Polliwogs choo chooing two-handed along the wall toward the far end of the pool and to what must be to Tim, "The Abyss".
I know what you’re feeling, little guy, back here safely in the sunny, safe and warm shallow end.
All those who's dreams die with the loss of funding know how you felt getting a reprieve today from what surely must seem like a drowning pool to you. With the temporary stay in funding, we all got a reprieve. Without continued funding, our hopes for a better future for you would have fallen away just like the deep end of this pool.
Yes Tim, today you're safe. The Deep End Is Closed for all of us until April 11th.
