You Know You’re a Swim Mom When…

I am a proud swim mom. This doesn’t mean I swim. Nope. I prefer floating. On a floatie. With an umbrella drink. Being a swim mom means I am the mother, of a child, who swims. Did you really think I’d be doing all that hard work? Ummm…of course not.

Anyhoo…being a swim mom also means all kinds of other crazy things like:

• Between spending multiple nights (five) a week in the stands and meet weekend days at the pool, you develop conditions like Bleacher Butt and Hunchback. It’s not pretty, but it’s a real thing. Swear.
• “Who’s that?” You ask after a meet or practice is over, because without swim caps, you don’t recognize ANYONE.
• You learn a whole new language of terms and acronyms like: SCY, LCM, LSC, IM, NT A, B, C times, etc. You know what a Colorado Pad is and that a flyover start isn’t bombers flying over during the National Anthem.
• Towels. You’re ALWAYS washing beach towels. Between practices and meets, there are always wet towels hanging around. And in the Winter season in the Midwest? You also have a case of the frozen towels, when your kids forget the wet ones in the car overnight.
• School year = every weeknight at the pool
• Summer = every weekday morning, at the crack of dawn, at the pool
• Dryland does NOT equal land in a drought
• Your child eats one dinner before practice. And another one after.
• Even though it’s the dead of winter, you still dress like it’s summer on meet weekends, due to the intense heat inside at short course pools. Cheer too much, and you might just break a sweat sitting in the stands.
• In the beginning, you swear you’ll never be the parent screaming at a meet, “KICK! KICK! KICK!” during every rhythmic breath he takes. And yet, you find yourself at some point, doing it anyway…even though you know he doesn’t hear you.
• Your first meet ever, you see all these people hanging out in the gym on blow up air mattress pads and camp chairs and think, ‘what the hell?’ And then before you know it, you too are “camping” at each swim meet. BONUS of camping? Avoiding Bleacher Butt, Hunchback and Overheating.
• The only time it’s okay for your child to write on themselves (or for you to), with a Sharpie.
• Sharpies and Highlighters. Enough said.
• Swimming as many events as you can in hopes of new medals and best times, right before your child ‘ages up’ and starts back at a blank slate.
• You show up to meets with printed psych/heat sheets, session reports, sharpies and highlighters. And a clipboard. Yes, a clipboard. And you write down every time for every one of your child’s events – even though you can look them up in the app right after.
• Sitting at a pool for 5 hours on a Saturday for a meet and watching your child swim a combined total of 10 minutes (or less) between all events for the day.
• You start coaching your kid on keep their head down, and their feet together on the Fly – even though you’ve never swam a stroke of the Fly in your ENTIRE life.
• In addition to watching your kid swim at a meet, you are keeping eagle eyes on the people in white shirts (officials), watching for raised hands for potential DQs (no, not Dairy Queens)
• The first DQ
• The first ribbon
• The only time in life you get excited about ‘lost time’. Meaning, dropping time and beating best times.
• That moment when you break out into a full on sweat, heaving breathing and freak out session because your kid is going to miss their next event, because they’re so busy chatting and laughing with other teammates they aren’t paying attention to what Event and Heat they’re on. Meanwhile, you’re yelling from the stands and waving your hands in the air, like you just don’t care, because OMG – they’re going to MISS THE EVENT. And then, that moment when your child looks up and the scoreboard, realizes it is HIS EVENT and HIS HEAT, RIGHT FREAKING NOW and he grabs his cap and goggles and shuffles as fast as he can to the starting blocks, jumps in the pool (because every other child is already at the ready and in the pool), the starting horn sounds and he swims his best Backstroke ever.

Not that that’s ever happened to me though.

This, my friends, is the glamorous life of a swim mom. And I wouldn’t trade it for a thing!