When I founded The Children’s Center some twenty five years ago, I had no idea the amount of joy that would come from this experience. There were so many wonderful children that passed through the doors of the Children’s Center and they left me with some of the most wonderful memories and hilarious stories. (Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent.)
One summer stands out in my mind. We always carried the kids to Lake Bistineau State Park in Doyline.…Just a couple of miles from where I grew up. The park had a great swimming pool area. It seemed that only the locals knew about this place. We basically had the pool to ourselves most of the time. The swimming pool was situated right on the lake. We spent many summers there swimming and fishing with the kids.
On one of our trips, we set up the row of lawn chairs. Julie and I and a couple of other supervisors would position ourselves around the center of the pool so we would have access to both ends of the pool. They had lifeguards there but we always watched our own.
We settled in. Everyone was sun screened. The kid’s life jackets were all assigned. All the towels were draped over the fence behind us. We took our positions. We were sitting in our chairs and enjoying the sun and enjoying the banter of the kids in the pool.
There was a diving board on the deep end. The kids had to pass our swimming test before they could enter the deep water and be allowed to dive off the diving board. There was one little guy, Jimmy. He was a pretty good swimmer for his age. He successfully passed our swimming test and was ready to venture out into the deep end. He was so proud. This little kid was short and a little stocky. He had blonde hair, almost white.
Now, the thing to note here is that the pool had strict rules. And one of those rules was that no cut offs and no shorts were allowed. Only appropriate swim wear was allowed. Jimmy loved to swim, obviously. But he and his older brother Mike were notorious for showing up on swim day without proper attire. And this day was no exception. We found swimming trunks for Mike but we couldn’t find anything for Jimmy. Jimmy was devastated. As luck would have it, Jimmy showed up that day in a pair of shorts that for all practical purposes looked like swim wear. We decided that we would take our chances.
All the kids were required to dress back into their dry clothes before entering the van to go back to the Center. With no change of clothes for Jimmy, we decided that we would let him wear his shorts and leave his underwear in his backpack. He then had to agree to sit out for thirty minutes before leaving so his shorts could dry out. He agreed.
Now that everyone was happy and all problems solved, Jimmy was headed for the diving board. His little chest was poked out and he was just so excited to finally make it to the ‘big kid’s area.’ Jimmy climbed up on the diving board and walked to the end. “Hey, Ms. Chris, watch!” Jimmy made his first jump off the board. I waited for his head to pop back up so I could praise him. “Great job, Jimmy!”
Jimmy stood in line again. He made his way to the end of the board and hollered again, “Hey, Ms. Chris watch this!” I watched. This time he did the splits before entering the water. By this time, we had all decided we had gotten by the watchful eye of the lifeguards who were already turning kids away who were not in proper swimwear. We were worried about Jimmy. While he made another big jump on the end of the board, I noticed something was wrong. There was something amiss with his shorts. As Jimmy swam to the side of the pool and hoisted his little body up, I looked him over and couldn’t see anything.
Jimmy spent the entire day on that diving board. After a while we gave our attention to the other children swimming. While glancing around I saw that Jimmy was on the diving board again and about to make his now famous split- legged jump. He had learned to jump even higher now. He sprang off the board, split his legs and hollered as he hit the water. What was that? I thought. Something didn’t look right. Something was hanging from his shorts. I turned to Julie and told her to watch Jimmy to see if she could tell what was up with his shorts.
Jimmy made his way to the end of the board. He was so excited because now he had the attention of Ms Julie and Ms Chris. Jimmy jumped up and split his legs. Yep, Julie saw it, too. “Is that what I think it is?” Julie asked. “I think so.” Before we could converse about what we thought it was, Jimmy was up on the diving board again. “Hey, Ms. Chris, Ms. Julie, watch!” And watch we did. This time our eyes were focused on his crotch area. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Instantaneously Julie and I both saw it. “Are those the families jewels I see?” Julie said. It seems that Jimmy shorts had a hole in the crotch area and because he had left his underwear off, things started to find their way out of the hole. “Surely, he can feel that when he hits the water,” I said. We watched his face as he surfaced and made his way over to the edge of the pool to pull himself out of the water. By this time all our eyes were on him and his reaction. We looked closely to see if others could see what we saw, especially the lifeguards. No one seemed to be paying attention.
We knew we had to do something quick. We didn’t want to embarrass him for sure. We called his brother Mike over. Instead of being direct with the situation, we asked Mike to watch Jimmy jump off the board. We instructed him to watch him closely. “What is that?” Mike blurted out. “Guess?” we said. “Oh, no!” Mike said. We instructed Mike that he needed to take Jimmy into the boy’s bathroom and fix the situation before the lifeguards and the other kids caught on.
Jimmy and Mike made their way to the bathroom. Mike had his arm around his little brother and he guided him into the boy’s bathroom. Jimmy did not go without a fight. After several minutes, both boys emerged from the boy’s bathroom. Jimmy immediately jumped in the pool and made his way to the deep end again. Mike made his way over to us. “Don’t worry,” Mike told us. “Jimmy put his underwear back on. We’re good to go.” Jimmy never forgot his swimming trunks again.
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