Water Slide Victory?

Of all the people I have met and all the crazy/stupid stuff that I have done in my life, I discovered that I have tried the hardest to impress my kids.  From juggling oranges, catching random food in my mouth and learning their favorite songs on the guitar, I will stop at nothing to try and earn a smile or a laugh or even a small round of applause.  I believe that this is really what separates moms from dads:  moms will be a kid's mom no matter what, but a dad doesn't have that same bond with their kids and we have to constantly work at it to earn the same love a mother gets for free.

Just think about it...what do people say when they're on TV?  They say, "Hi Mom!"  If they acknowledge their dad on TV, it's usually followed up with, "...send money!"  It's the same with injuries, "I want my Mommy!"  Which is then typically followed by, "Daddy said it was okay to do it..."

M and I sometimes take our kids to our local health club to take advantage of their weekly "Family Swim" nights, and their pool just so happens to have a water slide:





One night, the kids wanted so desperately for their dad to go down this slide.  So much in fact, that Ash was willing to go down with me.  The thing is, Ash isn't the best swimmer.  In fact, he's not much of a swimmer at all.  He tends to rely on his floaties to get him from one end of the pool to the other and he doesn't dare put his head underwater without his mask on.  See where I'm going with all of this?  Great scenario for a water slide right?

So knowing the lifeguards would more than likely not allow Ash on the slide with all of his attachments, I decided to take him to the top so he could find out for himself (if it was M, he would have just believed her without the need for proof).

So there ends the short lived desire for Ash to go down the water slide.  That is when the focus quickly shifted to Dad just going down by himself (thanks M).  Knowing this would make my kids happy, it wasn't hard to coax me to do it.  When I reached the top of the slide, I remember the lifeguard telling me to go down the right side, "Dude, trust me, it's like way faster!"  OK, dude, whatever.

Going down the slide, it wasn't hard to remember my training from back when I used to compete semi-professionally in the National Water Slide League (NWSL).  If you lift your legs and arch your back, you can get some wicked air coming out of the pipe (the judges usually look for that and score accordingly).



***The judge from Japan was always a tough scorer

Needless to say, I had built up some pretty good speed by the time I hit the bottom of the slide, and with my legs raised and back arched, I skimmed across the water before diving like a torpedo straight to the bottom.

At this point, a lot of things were going through my head.  The biggest was the "realistic" expectation of what was going to happen next.  Knowing I had just nailed a sweet/sick run down the slide, I imagined myself emerging from the water victorious like some mythical hero:



And of course, the fanfare from my adoring legion of followers would have erupted in a deafening cry of pure emotion:

But the actual experience didn't exactly happen as I had imagined it.  As I hit the water and skimmed across the top of it, I managed to acquire one of the worst wedgies of my adult life.  While I was feeling my swim trucks being pushed (with resistance) into my spleen, I forgot to close my eyes all the way.  So as my head began to submerge at that speed, my eyelids flipped inside out and I felt like that creepy kid on the school bus that used to weird us all out by showing us that trick.  With my eyes getting a good wash of heavily chlorinated water and my trunks now a permanent part of my lower intestine, I miscalculated the distance between me and the surface of the water, causing me to take in a deep breath of not air, but more heavily chlorinated water.

To say my final victory pose was less than stellar would be an understatement:

The worst part of this entire experience was looking over to see my kids.  M and Adler weren't even paying attention, so they never caught my historic jaunt down the water slide.  Ayris and Ash, however, caught the entire escapade and it scared the living hell out of them:

So here I was, just trying to be a dad and show off for my kids.  When in all actuality, all I did was scar them for life knowing that one of their first memories of a water slide nearly killed their dad.

What started out as this:

Something they might one day want to try themselves, turned into this:

Which to this day they have never made mention of that slide ever since that fateful trek made by their crazy/stupid dad.  So in closing, dad's will always have to risk their lives/pride to perform for their kids.  It's in our nature, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Also, to Greg and Sarah who are expecting their first baby in March, I leave you with my favorite memory from your wedding:

Greg, may you always have the courage to play the fool for your kid(s), and Sarah, may you always love him for it.

-Cheers!