Float

Every night, without fail, Luca asks the same questions.

“Dad?  The day after today, do I have swim class?”

Since I have no idea what his school schedule is, I say, “I have no idea, sweetheart.”

And without fail, he’ll ask, “Do I float?”

And without fail, I’ll say, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

He will agitatedly say, “Do I float?  Do I float?  When I swim, do I float?”

And I’ll say, “I have no idea, honey.”

This happens every night.  Every.  Night.  This all comes form Luca’s intense fear of the water.  As regular readers recall, Luca has two states in the water:

1)   Digging his fingernails into whoever is unlucky enough to be holding him in near or in the pool.

2)   Catatonic paralysis while being dragged through the water.

We are trying to shake him out of this.  Mostly because we’re heading on vacation in a few weeks and I don’t want to spend my whole time in Costa Rica being impaled by my son’s fingers.

So last weekend I demanded we all head to the YMCA for some swim fear therapy.  Luca was surprisingly into it.  Maybe because his brain had been fried by 14 straight hours of Xbox. 

We arrived, suited up, ignored the “please take a shower before entering the pool” sign and went to the shallow end.  I jumped in and turned around to wait for my little scaredy cat.

Luca was already in the water, happily splashing.  He had constructed an elaborate raft out of those foam noodle things.  I’m sure the kid had forty of them sticking out from every angle.  He looked like a rambutan fruit (look it up, jerks).

I’m not actually sure any part of his body was touching the water, but I was still happy.  I was free to chase Elijah, splash that weird looking kid and push around the SS Luca. 

So yes, Luca. To answer your question.  You do float.