There I was in the Family Locker Room. Yes, that place in the gym, where the loudest and most squirrely patrons (post-swim class young children) are crowded into individual changing rooms with their parents. The only objective: survival. Well, survival and to get the children dressed, but primarily survival.
As my boys have aged, this process has become easier, not quieter, but easier. One child (11-year-old Jacob) now wanders off to change wherever (I really should check on that someday), while his younger brothers and I still crowd into our family changing room. Recently, the two younger boys have now picked up the pace, shower, and get dressed, prior to me getting dressed after my post-workout shower. As a result, I first release them into the locker room’s main area to dry their hair under the electric hand dryers (usually reserved for hands, their heads fit under them well enough).
Finally exiting my family locker room prison, I was met by a family with much smaller children. Two or three kids (I could not really count them, they were moving too fast) all under the age of four were scurrying about, as their parents desperately tried to hold it all together. The mother, looking very tired and in need of a glass of wine, apologized to me for her kids running about. I told her not to worry and as I looked around with my children nowhere in sight (although 7-year-old Sam’s shoes had been oddly abandoned in the hallway), I told her that at least she knew where her kids were.
Smiling in a playful way, the bedraggled mom looked at me and said that I might want to check the lockers. Sure enough, some of the lower level locker doors were jiggling and emanating soft giggles. How soon I had forgotten this game. Last year, my boys loved hiding in the lockers, as I pretended to search for them. Time had changed my expectations. My routines had adjusted. Their return to an old joke had thrown me off. I knew that my life had moved on from the chaos that was momentarily swirling around that mother, but as I look to the future, it is useful to remember the tricks of the past… and to first check the ground floor lockers to see if they contain any of my missing children.
Post Postscript – After the next swim class, I overheard the dad of the younger children trying to keep them from hiding in the lockers. It appears as if the other family’s little kids had picked up on the strategy utilized by my kids to thwart parental efforts to get home prior to bedtime. Hey other dad, look on the Brightside, at least you will know one of places your children might be hiding, although that will mean dozens of lockers of searching.