It's called '101' because it's tricky...

Julia and I were at the YMCA the other day. Laura was working out while we swam. It's a normal routine thing. I don't mind it so much because I can swim a few laps. Julia even joins me on some of the laps. She recently has been taking some swim classes and has gotten a lot better at swimming. It's a welcome change from when she was deathly afraid of going into the deeper end of the pool.

Usually when we swim, we'll have races to see who can get to an underwater object the fastest, she'll swim under me like I'm a bridge, she'll ride my like some sea horse around the pool and various other games.

I thought that I would try to teach her the game Marco Polo. I've never played it, but I think I got the hang of the rules.

One person who is "It" swims around with his/her eyes closed and yell "Marco!". The other people in the game yell, "Polo!" and avoid getting tagged. I attempted to teach Julia this game.

"I'll go first," I said.

I closed my eyes and started swimming.

"Marco!" I yelled.

No response...

"Marco!" I yelled.

No response still...

I opened my eyes. Julia is just staring at me.

"I said 'Marco!'" I exclaimed.

"I know." Julia said.

"Then let's play it," I said.

"It looks too hard."

So that was it. We started swimming around again, but she didn't seem to want to do it.

"I've got a game!" Julia exclaimed happily. "It's called '101'"

"How do you play it?" I asked skeptically.

"OK... You swim around, OK?"

I nodded.

"Swim around with your eyes closed. And you try to find me," she continued.

"Wait..."

"And the mushroom (the spouting water fountain in the pool) is base."

"Wait a second... I'm supposed to swim around with my eyes closed and look for you?"

"Yes," Julia said.

"How am I supposed to find you though if I can't see? Are you going to be making any noise?" I asked.

"No!" Julia exclaimed. "You just have to find me!"

"Why is it called '101'?" I asked.

"It's called '101' because it's tricky. So come on! Let's play!"

"Oh, all right..."

"You go first."

So I closed my eyes and started swimming around. I grasped around the pool area in front of me. I felt a leg and grabbed at it.

"Gotcha!" I exclaimed.

"No!" Julia retorted. "This is base, Daddy. And you can't get me when I'm at base."

"What's base?" I asked.

"Base is this (pointed to fountain thing that she was sitting under), the ladders and the slide."

"Oh... okay." I said.

I closed my eyes again and started swimming around. I swam until I thought I heard her. I swam faster and felt her close. I lunged forward and grabbed her.

"Aha!" I exclaimed.

I opened my eyes and saw to my horror that I had not grabbed Julia, but I had grabbed another little girl about her age.

I muttered a very hurried and apologetic, "Sorry! Wrong Person" and looked around for Julia. She was all the way on the other side of the pool by the ladder to the water slide.

"Julia!" I yelled as I swam over.

"Why aren't you over there where I was?"

"Because I was hiding from you!"

"Well, you weren't where I was and I ended up grabbing someone else that wasn't you!" I explained.

I looked around and saw the girl that I had grabbed. I started worrying that someone had saw me grab her and totally saw me as some sick, twisted child predator that used his daughter as an excuse to grab total strangers. Being the paranoid person that I am, I also started to worry that someone was calling the cops as we spoke because the creepy guy with the beard was stalking other people's kids. It's not a pleasant thought picturing yourself trying to explain to the police that you weren't purposely trying to grab other kids. I didn't want it to be like a scene out of Little Children where the former child molester is dragged from a pool for swimming around kids because he wanted to cool off. I pictured myself getting dragged away screaming, "I was just playing 101! It's very tricky!"

So even after that incident, Julia still wanted to play 101.

I told her, "No."

"Because," I told her. "I don't want to be swimming around with my eyes closed looking for you when you're going to be no where near me and then I grab another strange kid again. That could get me into a lot of trouble. People might think that I'm a weirdo."

Julia wasn't buying it because she started moping. She really wanted to play the game that she had made up.

When Laura showed up after her workout, Julia told her that she was mad at me, of course, but when I explained why she was mad, Laura was on my side.

The next time we went swimming, I groaned when Julia said that she wanted to play 101 again.

"No!!" I exclaimed.

"Come on!"

"No!"

"Please!?"

"Oh," I started to give in, "All right."

Julia smiled.

"But... You have to be it first. I'll go hide while you swim around."

She agreed.

I got as far away as I could and waited. She started swimming and swimming around the pool, but didn't find me.

Julia finally gave up, opened her eyes and swam over to me. She said, "Okay, Daddy. Rule change: You can open your eyes."

I guess 101 was too tricky for her...