Fun in the Sun

The Shaums visited Austin this weekend and they flat wore us out. Trinity is 7 and already smarter than me. Zeke is 3 and already bigger than me. Eden is only four months old and has redder hair than me.

We took them to the pool on Saturday and Zeke wanted to ride the water slide. This will go down in history as the day Zeke became a man.

Demonstrating that he has more mettle than I did at his age, he climbed the stairs to the top of the slide while we watched from below. We were wondering how high he would get before realizing what the hell he was getting himself into. From where we were, at the end of the slide, we lost sight of Zeke momentarily when he reached the top, but we saw the lifeguard toss aside a life jacket that looked suspiciously like the one Zeke was wearing (not allowed on the slide). Surely the lifeguard, who as far as anyone knows is PAID to keep people from DROWNING, would not jettison Zeke’s life jacket?

Heck yes she would. The next thing we knew Zeke was careening toward us, sans life jacket. He plunged into the pool where Craig snatched him up. I was still kind of amazed he went through with it and watched to see if the look on his face was exhilaration or terror.
It was actually confusion.

Apparently he was as puzzled as we were about the lifeguard’s decision to remove the life jacket because when Craig lifted him out of the water and he caught his breath, the first thing he said was, “I can’t swim.” This was not a panicked, “I CAN’T SWIM!” like someone may invoke while being pulled away by the tide, but more like a general statement of fact, like…, “not sure what that broad was thinking, but I can’t swim.”

The second thing he said was, “she took my life jacket!” This was a little closer to panic, though tempered now that he was safe. He repeated it a couple of times, as if trying to make sense of why on earth an adult, someone who is SUPPOSED to take care of him, would do something as STUPID as send him down a gigantic water slide without a life jacket, essentially signing his death warrant?

Then, in what I think was a gesture of defiance to his would-be assassin, Zeke hauled his stones back up the stairs and went again.