The Leaky Swim Diaper

I haven't written in quite a while. In fact, its been 2 months! In that time, I have been doing all the fun summer things that moms and kids like to do- and coming up with some great blog ideas in the process. So today, I dedicate another blog to my dear friend Carolyn. This is a story that HAS to be told:

If you are a mom of a child who is not yet potty-trained, then you are well aware of the importance of the swim diaper. These great little diapers are required at all public and community pools. Now whether they really hold everything inside of them is still the question. I can tell you from experience that they DO NOT hold in pee-pee, so don't allow your child to wear one in their carseat on the way to the pool. If Junior goes potty, you will get to go through the hassle of taking the cover off of the carseat to wash it (or just letting it dry out, which I don't recommend if your car will be subject to the Texas heat. One word- STINKY!). So the basic reason for the use of swim diapers is really just to keep the worse of two yucks, poo-poo, inside the diaper and out of the pool. Or, so we think.

Last week, a few friends and I decided to take the kids to the pool. Carolyn realized, after we got there, that she didn't have a swim diaper for her daughter so she borrowed one. You would think that everything went fine since all of the kids were wearing their swim diapers. Unfortunately for Carolyn, this was NOT the case.

Shortly after getting to the pool, the friend who lived in the neighborhood had to leave because her son wouldn't use the potty at the pool's restroom. He was having a constipation problem (and that's a WHOLE other story), and couldn't relax enough to go poo-poo because the restroom was so stinky. She told us we were welcome to stay even though she had to leave, so we stayed to swim.

A while later, my son decided he was done swimming and wanted to play in a puddle of stagnant water by the outdoor showers. After carrying him away from the puddle a dozen times, I decided that it was time for us to go. Besides that, the heat was unbearable. Texas has had record highs this summer and may go on record for the hottest summer ever. Even playing in the pool is too hot!

Well, Carolyn had planned to stay a little while longer. She didn't expect to leave so soon, but the swim diaper had other plans...

Her daughter had been playing beside the pool, but wasn't actually in the water. Carolyn suddenly noticed something disgusting leaking out the sides of the swim diaper. She brought her daughter over to the lounge chair to change the diaper, and lo and behold, opened up the yuckiest poo-poo ever! It went everywhere- the towel, the ground, and all over her daughter's legs. It was so bad that she gave up with the baby wipes and opted to stick her under the shower. After cleaning up the mess, she noticed something on the concrete near the pool. When she went to investigate, she found that the diaper had failed at the very thing it was designed to do: keep the poop INSIDE the diaper. There was not only poop on the concrete, but a small portion had fallen into the water!

She attempted to scoop it out of the water, but it quickly sank to the bottom of the pool. What now?

Being an honest Christian woman, Carolyn did the right thing and waited for the security guard of the pool to return to his seat so she could let him know about the poop in the water. Well, what should have been an easily-handled issue turned into a whole other fiasco.

The security guard informed us that Carolyn would have to pay for the pool to be cleaned- HOA policy. I was floored! No way! Not only does my friend who lives in the neighborhood pay a monthly HOA fee to cover pool maintenance, but approximately 1,000 other people pay a fee, too. Now I could understand making a parent pay for pool clean-up if they failed to put a swim diaper on their child, but this was not the case. What to do?

Well, phone calls were made to the HOA. Complaints regarding this policy have been noted. And now we wait. As for Carolyn, it was not the way she had planned for her day to go. But then again, isn't that the way things are sometimes? We plan for a certain outcome only to be surprised by a completely different result.

What did I learn from this? I learned that honesty is still the best policy. Carolyn and I could have easily left the pool without telling the security guard about the poop. We certainly wouldn't be dealing with the HOA policy problem, right now . But at the end of the day, would either of us be able to rest peacefully knowing that we had failed to report the problem? Also, we would have had to live with the guilt in knowing that other people were swimming in a poop-infested pool.

Yes, it seems that her honesty wasn't appreciated as it should have been. It would have been nice to get a response from the HOA that went something like this: "Thanks for letting us know. Thanks again for remembering to use a swim diaper. There was no way you could have known that it would leak, so don't worry about it. We will handle it." That wasn't the way it went, but the important thing is that she handled it honestly. For that, God will honor her. In the end, whether she ends up paying a fee or not, she can rest in peace knowing that she did the right thing. God is smiling because she did.