Locker Room Talk

Lukas started his first swimming classes this past week.  We enrolled him in the parent and tot program with me and he is loving every minute of it.  So much so, that with his recent obsession with superhero's I wouldn't be surprised if Aquaman becomes a new favorite.  Not that there's anything wrong with Aquaman of course.  I was once an Aquaman fan myself.

Anyway, we have only been to one class so far and we have already been working on kicking his feet, blowing out through his nose as he puts his head under water, and reaching with one hand and then the other as we moved through the pool to retrieve a toy we tossed ahead of us.  Like many of the sporting events we have undertaken, the swimming seemed to come naturally to him.

His locker room etiquette on the other hand? Not so much.

Prior to class starting we obeyed the posted rules and hit the showers to rinse off the outside world before depositing ourselves into the pool.  Next to us in the open shower cavern was a naked guy who was also showering, after apparently exiting the pool.  I pressed the button to turn on a shower head for Lukas.

Then as I was immersing myself with warm water, Lukas yelled at the top of his lungs - in his normal voice "Look Daddy!  Look, look!  That man is washing his pen*s!!  He's washing his pen*s! Hahaha. That's siwwey daddy" as he continued laughing while the water ran down his face. 

I think it was more that he was doing this cleansing in public that struck Lukas as amusing.  "He's just cleaning up Bud.  We all do that" I replied to him, as I turned to the other guy who I could tell was a father himself as I saw his older son showering on the other side of him.

"Uh, sorry Man" I offered to the other dad, a little embarrassed "It's our first time in a public locker room".  "I understand" he responded, pointing a thumb over at the kid next to him.

Then, a few minutes later, as we were drying off in another section of the locker room, Lukas whimpered a bit, before turning to me and telling me that "A man made a mad face a me, Daddy".  I looked around, before telling him that I was standing right there, and I didn't see anyone make a mad face at him.

"Yes he did!  He's right there!" my little guy shouted out loud again, pointing directly at another dad who was not 5 feet away from him.  "Look!" To Lukas' credit, the guy did have a pretty sour expression on his face, but it certainly wasn't directed at my little dude.  "Yeah!" Lukas continued - turning to me still shout talking through his clenched teeth and forcing his cheeks downward, "His face is doing this Daddy!!"

With that I couldn't help looking over at the dad once again to see how close he had nailed the guys expression, but at that he was already walking off to look for his son. And with that my 3 year old and I were briefly alone again in our section of the locker room. 

It was a good opportunity to have a one on one with him about locker room etiquette. And about keeping his thoughts to himself.