Swimming Lessons

My oldest son’s school held a championship gala on Friday last week. The idea is that all of the top swimmers in each grade compete against each other.

His first event was a length of freestyle. He and five other competitors mounted the starting blocks. With the ease of seasoned competitors they readied themselves. The starting gun was fired and six splashes ensued. It needs to be said that the competition amongst these six friends is terrifyingly fierce. One of the boys though is head and shoulders above the rest of them though, and there was little doubt that he would be winning everything. That aside, there was no shortage and energy spared in getting to the other side. At the halfway mark, my son was in second, although that may have been my biast parental vision. Then he swam into the wall! He followed that up by swimming into the lane marker and finished a frustrated last.

It transpired that on diving his goggles had come off and rested uselessly on his nose and mouth. These things happen! He was rather disappointed that they could not swim the race again as he had not been able to give his best. He channelled his disappointment into his next race and managed to come second in the breaststroke. Backstroke, a clear non favourite, earned him a fifth place.

When all was done and everyone happy, a prize giving was held. A trophy was handed out to each of the swimmers who had accumulated the most points in their age group. The winner of the under eights, was announced as (big surprise), my son. My wife and I looked at each other and shook our heads. Somebody had made a big bad mistake. On the other side of the pool, my son collected his trophy, and was overjoyed to have his photo taken and then sit with all the other winners.

You can imagine the thoughts going through our heads. We obviously had to fix the mistake as the real winner really needed to be recognised. At the same time, how does one publically remove an award that has been given to a seven year old in a way that he can understand and causes him the least public embarrassment? I guess there really is no way to get that all right.

My wife approached the vice principle (as the principle was still handing out trophies to the right kids). He had the results checked and they found their error. The kid who had accumulated the most points was announced and he too had his picture taken. He then walked over to the rest of the winners.

My son stood up, shook his friends hand and handed over the trophy! Don’t get me wrong, he was very upset. As a dad, I could not have been more proud! My son had just learnt one of life’s tough lessons, that doing the right thing is often more than incredibly difficult (and perhaps that the right thing often does not feel right)!

Three days later and I am still so incredibly proud of the way he handled himself. I hope that as parents, we can assist our sons to build on this strength of character and become forces for good in a world gone mad.