Goggles

My sister and I took my two boys and her twelve-year-old son swimming last week. It was fun… watching from the side, because I got to see the kids enjoying themselves, and doing interesting things. This was hard-earned because going to the pool was not an option for years because it was echoey and loud and chaotic and getting dressed after being wet was intolerably frustrating and a sensory overload. Did you know that trying to get dressed when no completely dry can cause your underwear to roll into a “bum tube” so you can’t pull them up? Anyway, that is a thing.

Miles lost his goggles. As he was leaving the pool, I mimed a reminder to him, making glasses shapes with my fingers circling my eyes. He walked back along the side of the pool, slowly, thinking. He got back into the family hot tub and and sat down. I watched as he started pulling his hair out, one at a time. I remarked to my sister about him just sitting there not looking for the goggles. And why was he trying to pull out individual hairs? Was he ignoring me completely and just goofing off?

I watched him for a few more minutes until he proved he had forgotten all about the goggles by floating on his side. I began to dismiss them as lost, and focused my attention on reminding the other two boys it was time to leave. A few minutes later Miles came walking up, dangling his goggles, I gave him a thumbs up and the boys went to get changed.

Later that night I asked Miles how he found the goggles.
“Well,” he said, “I thought about where I had seen them last. In the hot tub. So, I went back and sat down where I had been sitting. I wondered where they would have gone if I had dropped them in that spot. I noticed there is a current in the water from the air jets on the sides. Goggles float for a while and then will either sink or stay afloat depending on the current trajectory and pulling force of the undercurrent.”

“Why were you pulling out the hairs on your head?” I asked.

“Each hair is light enough to stay afloat, so my thinking was if I watched the pathway of the hair it would lead me to a more probable and logical destination of the goggles. But, the hair was too light and fast and difficult to track. So, I made my arm as limp as possible and allowed it to float, watching its direction, and tried to follow it. This led me to a different part of the hot tub. Then I found a water toy with a similar weight and buoyancy to goggles; I let them go, which actually worked and led me straight to the goggles.”

My assumptions of his intentions contradicted the reality that his behavior of sitting and playing with his hair and trying to float in the hot tub were actually clever ways to fulfill my request that he find the goggles. And it worked:)