The other day I was at the pool with both my own children and several of the “spares” we always seem to collect, when one of the spares came up to me holding what I consider to be one of the most sinister items you can find at the pool: a pair of swim goggles.
“Would you fix my goggles?” he asked me.
Recoiling slightly from the proffered pair, I hissed: “I don’t do goggles,” as nicely as I could–which wasn’t very, considering that I was refusing to do something that every other mother at the pool had probably already done twenty times each that morning. This fact was not wasted on the child in front of me: looking around at all of the other goggle-fixing mothers, he gave me a baleful stare and again thrust the goggles under my nose, at which point I shrugged my shoulders and made a face as if to say “no-speaka-da-lingo” until he finally went away. This, of course, was all a lie: I know perfectly well what goggles are; if I didn’t, how could I hate them so thoroughly?
Well, that’s not exactly true, either: I don’t hate them; in fact, I even have my own pair that I use for lap swimming. What I hate, though, is everything that accompanies a pair of goggles: the constant losing, finding, fixing, adjusting, putting on and removing that is part and parcel of any pair of child’s goggles. In fact, each pair that is sold should come with a warning label that reads in part: Caution–please note that these goggles will consume at least thirty percent of your available time at the pool. Since there will be a further thirty percent lost to the application and reapplication of sun screen, as well as thirty percent dedicated solely to the inflation and retrieval of pool toys, and twenty percent spent in escorting children to and from the bathroom (and since these numbers add up one hundred and ten percent of your available time), we highly recommend that you also purchase one of our other fine products, such as extra strength aspirin, to compliment them.
Of course, it’s not as if goggles are unique in the world of children’s play equipment for their time-consuming qualities: nearly every piece of equipment (or, as I like to think of it, effluent), that accompanies a child’s activities requires constant adjustment and upkeep on the part of the parent to keep it in working order. The space shuttle itself doesn’t require as much maintenance and inspection as your average pair of shin guards.
First, the item in question must be watched constantly, lest it slip from this plane of existence the very morning it is needed. Next, it must be tied, strapped, hooked or hung on the appropriate child, a task only slightly more difficult than putting a dress on a greased pig. Finally, the fit must be continually adjusted to assure that it is not too tight, too loose, too dangly, too bulky, too uncomfortable–in short, so that it feels as if it does not actually exist. This is true whether the item is a pair of shin guards, a violin shoulder rest, a baseball hat or the belt of a karate ghi.
There is a difference, however, between all of the above mentioned pieces of equipment and a pair of swim goggles: the swim goggles are optional. And so, I opt out. I don’t do goggles. As far as I’m concerned, whatever goes on between a child and their private pair of goggles–hair-pulling, lens fogging, strap breaking, even abandonment–is their own business; I would no sooner get between a child and a pair of goggles than I would between Paris Hilton and a video camera.
Now there’s someone who could use her goggles adjusted.