Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Oh the minds of teenagers

All I can say is that he is definitely a teenager with a mind of his own.

image courtesy of www.canstockphoto.com/


Today was Nathans official official last swim meet of his career. It was a non qualifier meet that had to be rescheduled due to inclement Texas weather. Now I almost did not go to this meet as it had no importance whats so ever....and now I am so glad that I did....as this is what occurred....

Nathan had talked all season about wanting to swim the corkscrew in a meet. This is not an official stroke for those of you who may not know. This kid would intermittently talk all season about how he was going to do this. And we would all chuckle and not really say anything. I would just motherly remind him that this was an important meet and maybe today was not good (whatever that meet was).

So Nathan signs up to swim the 50 free....not one of his events. He starts off and swims the first 25 like normal.....and then he flips and goes into the corkscrew motion.

All I can do is laugh uncontrollably (and this lasted the rest of the day). But lets just say, I had seen the coach mad before, but nothing like this. She was beyond red in the face and  getting other coached upset as well. The team cheered him on all full of laughter and aah. He then went and got a licking like he had never got from coach before. Now watching down from the stands, I could get an idea of what was being said, and could tell that Nathan was not going to back down to the coach who drove us insane all season. The punishment he could take.

He came to tell me the exchange of words when the official referee called him back down. Pretty much the conversation went like this:

  • that stunt you pulled could get the entire team disqualified for unprofessional conduct. Were you aware of that? Answer- No sir
  • what kind of example did you just set for the younger swimmers here today
  • we pulled your history and see you have never had a citation before and we see that you are a senior
  • were you just wanting to go our with a bang? Answer-Yes sir
  • fortunately for you today we will not disqualify you or your team over this
  • lecture continued for a few minutes
Then we see Nathan walking to the locker room with his bag and come out dressed. Coach had kicked him out of the meet and pulled him from the rest of the events.

Now...maybe...I should have been upset with him.....but I found the whole thing quite funny. Well, not the part that the team could be DQ'd.....but everything else. I know that this was something that Nathan really wanted to do. And I have learned to pick and choose many of my battles with my son. He possesses a trait to which I often lack. I am a pleaser....and well....sometimes Nathan wants to just please himself.

Who knows.....maybe this was on his bucket list and now he can put a line through that. All I know is that after the season we have had....it left me with a good laugh.



3 comments:

  1. Go Nathan! That is awesome...coming from another people pleaser.

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  2. Too funny. Jenna at one time told me the corkscrew was her favorite stroke too and couldn't understand why it was not an event.

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  3. I love watching the corkscrew, I would have cheered him on. But I am glad they didn't DQ the entire team over this.

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