Don't run, please

It was 101 degrees yesterday. It cooled to what felt like 99 degrees last night as I tried to sleep in the stifling heat.

But I hate complaints about the weather. There's nothing to be done about how hot or cold it is, so why bitch about it? Plus, we all know that it gets hot here — it is, afterall, the desert.

To combat the heat, we spend a lot of time at the local pool which is a couple blocks away. After work, we gather our towels, goggles (which Mar used to call "gobbles" much to our delight), noodles and bottles of water and walk over to the pool.

This year, finally, Margaret is taking swim lessons. We intended for her to have lessons long before her 6th birthday, but ... well, you know, the pathway to hell and all.

Her lessons start at 5. Bill took her and I came late yesterday to witness the glory that is the swim lesson.

When I arrived, Mar was already in the pool.I sat along the wall with Jenn (Kate is also taking her first lessons) and Bill. I was promptly given the rules for the swim classes.

The rules for the kids were pretty straight forward — shower before class (they whack you with a wet noodle if you try to get into the pool with a dry suit), no running or food, blah, blah blah.

My favorite was that all students were to enter the pool in a counterclockwise manner.

WTF? How do you enter a pool in a counterclockwise manner?

The claim was that in an attempt to keep dirt out of the pool, they wanted everyone to walk around the pool — counterclockwise, of course — before they enter.

Um, ... what?

I don't get it, but what do I know?Then there was a list of rules for the parents.

They made sense for the most part, but it was the militant manner in which they were presented that annoyed me.

We must not pass the white drain strip thing that was on the deck. We must not talk to, approach or otherwise distract our child during class. We must keep children not in class under our control at all times.

So there I sat, annoyed with the list of demands, I must comply with and yet none of the other parents were following them at all.

One mom interrupted my kid's class so the instructor would adjust her kid's goggles. One girl kept yelling to her mom who would walk to the edge — past the white drain thingy — and yell back.

My point is: If you're gonna make up militant rules then you should enforce them with an iron fist.

The girl who kept yelling to her mom from the pool, should've been dunked every time she yelled — just to remind her that following the rules in the pool will keep your lungs full of air.

And the mom who interrupted class to make sure her kid's goggles weren't coming off, should've been kicked by the rest of the parents ... mostly just for our amusement.

But no one did any type of enforcement. Maybe next time, I'll start enforcing the rules myself. I'll carry a clipboard with the rules laminated and read them to rulebreakers. After which, I'll record their names and their infraction.

Oh, maybe I'll get a whistle, too.