Hooray! Today is the last day of swimming lessons. I look forward to doing school in the mornings and having my afternoons free to do really important things.

Like nap.

I have been hauling books to the pool and having the kids do some work while they waited for their siblings to take their lesson. The young ladies who run the desk have been learning about Lief Erikson and getting a review on addition and subtraction. The other moms with tots running around and their older children safe in classrooms likely think I am nuts. But they smile friendly smiles, so it doesn’t matter.

Billy’s lesson ends just before 11 am when lap swimming begins, so often various adults begin filtering in and sign in at the desk right where we sit. The other day, I read an Aesop Fable to Katie called The Hares and The Frogs. She randomly picked this story out of our Fable book, and I had no idea what it was about. After I read it, she drew a picture in her blank book to go with the story, and then her assignment was to retell the story to me, and I would write down what she said on the page with her illustration.

Just when we got to the retelling part, an older man came in to do lap swimming. There was no attendant at the desk right then – just a sign that said she’d be back in 5 minutes. So he waited. And he listened to Katie tell me this story:

All the hares think all the other animals are their enemies. If they all run away, they will drown themselves. All the hares went to the pond. They saw frogs jumping in like they were drowning themselves. One of the hares said, “Stop! It doesn’t matter whoever you are. Don’t drown yourself. Somebody has it worse.”

Taken completely out of context, I really wonder what that man thought about my 6 year old’s story. Yes, sir, for school today our first graders will be discussing the pros and cons of suicide…