I Blinked And I Missed My Son’s Magic Moment

I wanted a photo opportunity, but missed my shot at redemption

Senior night at the pool is all over…including the shouting. Author photo

It never fails.

You spend 13 years trying to get your kids to their events, plays, concerts and swim meets somewhat close to on time and when it’s really important, you miss out.

So it was on this, my son’s final meet of the regular swim season and senior night when our pool honors people who are competing in their final meet.

Much to my irritation, most swim clubs wait until the home stretch of a meet to honor their seniors. It always happens. The meet will be moving at a good clip and look like it might even finish before 1 or 2 am (so, I’m exaggerating. I think after 13 years, I’ve earned the right to stretch the truth a little) and everything comes to a grinding halt usually just six races before the end of the meet. All so we can spend the next hour or so honoring the kids who are aging out. Quite frankly, I don’t know who they are, so I could care less.

But tonight was supposed to be our night. Our night to interrupt the flow and make everybody wait while we honored people I actually care about, including my son.

This, of course, is never the way things go because the universe doesn’t work that way.

Instead, they transpire more like the way they did this evening.

For the first time ever we decided not to lug chairs or coolers or anything and just (gasp) buy something from the concession stand for dinner. Since we were going to work as timers for the second half of the race, we just didn’t need chairs. We even dropped our son off at the pool early so he would be there in time for warm-ups and we could take the dog on a poop walk and still get there in time for the final big cheer of the year at the start of the meet.

We were on track, too, until our son called and said he’d forgotten something at home.

His swimsuit.

By the time my wife found it (because it wasn’t where he said it was, of course) and drove it to him we only had a small time window to get there early. And our dog still had to be walked.

Like most dogs, Johnny the wonderdog has this built-in radar that tells him when his owners are in a rush and need him to poop quickly. I’m not sure why, but being aware of such a situation flips a switch in his brain that triggers performance anxiety, which shuts down his bowels for as long as needed until the crisis passes. So, if we need to go somewhere in 20 minutes or less, it will take him 25 or more to get the job done. Today was no exception. My wife finally gave up and brought him home just in time for our son to call and tell us that something was about to start, he just didn’t know what, and that we should get there ASAP.

So, we finally left right before 6 and somehow made it just before the start of the final cheer of the season and were much relieved. Until we looked across the pool at the diving boards where all of the seniors were already standing holding bouquets of flowers, indicating the senior ceremony had just ended.

Somehow, this wasn’t quite the senior photo I had in mind. Author photo.

All of which begs the question, what the heck was that? After 13 years of this craziness, I wanted a photo opportunity, I wanted a shot at redemption, but instead, all I got was this crazy tie-dyed t-shirt.

I assure you, it won’t happen again. In fact, I’ve already scouted out where their going to hold commencement ceremonies for my kids and I’ve set up a camp site at both universities because you can never be too sure.

At least now we know who’s the top banana. Author photo.

— From a man who’s gone off the deep end,

David Volk