Sunday, November 20, 2011

Quatrain #12: Liquid Enlightenment

The boys high school water polo season concluded recently, and now swim season is here. Practice begins Monday with a 5,000 yard workout, and then virtually every day on the calendar thereafter is charted with practices or meets until mid-March. It's an impressive routine that makes for no less than an 17-hour day for my son.

As if school doesn't start early enough for teenagers, let's toss in 6:00am practices for good measure. That means, get up around 5:00am. Practice for two more hours after school? No problem. That'll keep those hormones from getting the upper hand. Hey, toss me a chocolate milk!... research has proven that it's the best recovery drink around. Got homework? Get it done by 10:00pm so you can get some sleep for gosh sakes, because if the GPA slips, then you're diplomatically dropped from the team. Maybe High School can be re-named High Stress instead.

Don't get me wrong. I think all this drilling, trimming, timing, stroking, styling, flying, breathing, kicking, and tapering, does wonders for a teenager. I swim two, sometimes three times a week myself and wouldn't trade it for any other form of exercise in the world. My selfish sarcasm is aimed at the idea that I should have a chauffeur's license rather than the standard issue Michigan driver's license. I have an ocean of driving time ahead of me. But on the other hand, I suppose that if I wasn't getting around town so much in the last year doing this, then a good portion of the quatrains wouldn't even exist. Hmmm... I'm torn.

So I'm not sure what my complaining and bargaining is about. Wait... oh, yeah, that DABDA thing... 'B' is bargaining. Zoiks.., I'm grieving! The fact is, his experience of high school exponentially transcends what mine was like, and that's a good thing. But this kind of commitment is something that I never, ever anticipated seeing when I signed up to be a parent. Sorry to dump on you like this, but thanks for listening.

2 comments:

  1. That is a grueling schedule Don. And no, there is nothing in the parenting books that I have ever read that can prepare you for what parenting is really like. Committment, Caring, Chauffeuring, but most of all loving our miracles!

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  2. I just came upon this Don... I couldn't have said it better myself! You have captured exactly how most of the polo/swim parents are feeling. So proud, but also a moment of dread as well as the season kicks off. The good news is that drivers licenses are not in the very distant future for the boys!

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