Ben There

Chapter 17
Early May; Pools and Showers

Chapter Description: Benji's Sunday afternoon.

Early May; Pools and Showers

It was yet another big, big, big week for Benji! Aren’t they all? But it was a week without any disasters and zero new changes in his life too.

Well, unless you count the two rails that were put on his bed during the middle of the week, but Benji didn’t count that at all. They kept all his animals from rolling off the bed so much, and he could still climb in and out all by himself because the front rail didn’t go all the way to the end. And they made him feel very cozy at night too.

And, yeah, he changed schoolrooms where he took his nap at school. But that wasn’t bad, because there were more people in the new room who used bottles at nap time, like he did now to get some of his mama’s special milk. And there were more people who had to wear night pants at nap time too, like he did, though he didn’t need them every day. And Amber was there sometimes to help him get changed too. But the good part of all that was that he now got to share a nap pad with Cyndi, and slept right next to Bobby, who he already new because he was Peter’s baby brother.

But saying there weren’t any new really bad things doesn’t mean that there were no small woes (he still had to get a shot for instance, but only one. The very last one!). With each such little woe Benji would cry, fuss and/or pout for what seemed to him the right amount of time, and then he’d just keep tooling along until the next thing.

Besides there were a lot more things to get excited about that week then there were to fuss about. In fact, Vicky had come to the conclusion that excited was now Benji’s default setting.

And the first big event of the week occurred on Sunday: Swimming!

That weekend was the first weekend of the year that the local pools were open. Benji (and his family) was still on the waiting lists to join the clubs (their new township being located in the region of the economic pyramid that doesn’t do public pools), but they got lots of invitations to the country club’s pool.

That is why Benji found himself on his back on a locker room bench, with the top of his head touching the top of Cyndi’s head, and unsure of whether he should be being happy or be being very fussy.

"But, little puppy dog," his mama said, "it isn’t really a diaper. It is just your new swimming suit."

Benji may have been little, but he was nobody’s fool. The thing went under him and wrapped around rather than sliding up his legs, and that’s a diaper, and it was thick too. "Diaper. I too big!!" he said.

"Puppy boy, to go swimming, you have to wear this kind of swim suit because of the size you are." Actually the pools rules said ’under four’ (which she thought extreme), and she thought he could pass for four right now, but she knew that wouldn’t be possible the next time they were invited.

"Look, Cyndi’s is the very same kind." And it was except for different pictures and a second piece she wasn’t going to actually need again for eight or so years.

"She a baby."

Cyndi said, "’M Not! Big girl."

Her mommy said, "Hush, sweetie. He knows; he’s just being all fussy."

Benji’s mama said, "But look, sweetie, these can’t be baby pants. See, they have sharks and sting rays and swordfish on them. Babies don’t know about those things!"

Benji looked down at his swim diaper and had to admit those were some pretty cool looking fishes.

His mama picked him up and said, "Now, everyone is waiting for you at the pool. Do you want to wear this or not go swimming?"

Benji sighed one of his very long, deep shoulder moving sighs, and he said, "Oh Taaaaayyyyy,". Hey, this was swimming; sacrifices could be made.

"OTayyyy," his mama said back to him, and she bounced up and down as she carried him outside, and he was plopped down into a whole bunch of water.

Behind him Cyndi yelled, "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

And he yelled, "Ahhhhhyyyaaaahhh!" However, then he said, "But this baby pool. I go there," pointing at the big pool.

"Let’s start out here, and go there in a little tiny while. It’s been a long time since you’ve swam, sweetie. Let’s see how you do." As she said that she was picking him up and dipping him into the water without letting his feet touch the bottom, and it was hard for him to think about anything but having wet feet, and when she let him land, he said, "Oh Taaaaayyyyy"

Then she asked, "And what do these sharks on your swim suit say, Puppy?"

"Fishes don’t talk!"

"Oh. Well, what do puppy dogs say?"

"Woof Woof. Bow-wow."

"Nah-uh. I know one who always says, ’Oh Taaaaayyyyy’."

"Dat just silly!" Benji said, and he flopped down in the wading pool and started to dog paddle (not intending to prove his mama’s point.) He had begun swimming lessons before the last time he was three and retained some of that kinetic memory; he even managed a few overhand strokes and kicks that propelled him.

Cyndi had grown up her first time in a colder climate and wasn’t doing as well, but she thought she was. As she churned the water like a super charged paddle wheeler, she called out, "Benji, see. I swim. I too big."

Benji had never intended to give Cyndi a hard time, she was nice, and he didn’t try to analyze her strokes either. Instead he sat on the wading pool step and tried to make as much white water as he could, that was better than swimming anyway, and then he and Cyndi had an unannounced jumping up and down contest. When she fell walking back from the middle of the pool, he decided she need him to hold her hand so that would never happen again; after all she really had become a little kid; she wasn’t pretending like he was.

They hadn’t been there long before Amber and Danielle spotted them, and Amber charged into the shallow pool and grabbed Benji, almost too fast and fast enough to make him holler and laugh. Danielle picked up Cyndi a bit more slowly, but Cyndi laughed like Benji.

Benji’s girlfriend was wearing a green, two-piece with halter straps for the top and string ties for the bottom (well, they were three or four inch strings, but they looked like you could pull the ends and make the whole thing fall off.). Danielle’s suit was white and came up higher but was narrower in the back and lifted and separated better. Benji noticed none of this.

However, Amber did notice what he was wearing and said, "Am I safe holding you, B.B.? Those are some vicious looking creatures on your bottom!"

"Just pictures, Amber! See; poke them." And he demonstrated poking the pictures on his swim diaper.

"Oh, I see," Amber said, and poked his behind a few times.

"Put down. I swim."

His mama said, "Have either of you seen my daughters since they got here?" Vicky and Kathy had already been at the pool for over an hour. They had ridden with Danielle and Monique while Benji had had to wait and wait for his mama to get ready because there wasn’t enough room in Danielle’s car (or because his mama didn’t want him in the sun for that long).

Danielle said, "Kathy and Monique are in that massively multiplayer Marco Polo game over there, and Vicky’s up near the diving boards, enjoying being annoyed by about a dozen boys."

Amber said, "Yeah, and they’re all sixth graders; she has enthralled my little brother and his whole posse. But she’s dealing and being mostly nice too."

Benji’s mama laughed when she said, "Are they all like Danny, Amber? Then she should be OK."

"Yeah, there’s enough good ones to keep the others in line from what I’ve seen of those guys -- which is a bit way too much."

Benji said, "I go see Danny." Benji still thought of Danny as a real, real nice little kid.

"Okay, puppy, if Amber wants to take you over there. All my children have too many acquaintances to want to interact with me, I guess."

Benji didn’t understand that sentence and didn’t try to, which was how his mama wanted it, otherwise he wouldn’t have left her alone all day. Amber understood though and said, "Oh, we can wait till later or something."

"No, I’m only kidding, Amber. If you don’t mind watching him, I don’t mind him going. And it will let Vicky know that we’re here too."

It was only five minutes later, but long enough for her to get suntan lotion on, when Danny literally trotted up to her. He was bouncing more than normal, and making clopping noises as he came. He came to a stop and said, "Neiggggggh." He wouldn’t have done those things if he hadn’t been carrying Benji piggy-back, and Benji said, "Whoooa, horsie!"

His mama said, "Be careful, Danny. Are you sure he’s not too heavy? He’s still over thirty pounds."

The ninety pound boy said, "It’s no problem," as he quickly sat Benji down.

Vicky was right behind them (with two more boys shorter than her) and said, "Is it OK if we take The Bug into the big pool and give him a ride on a float, Mom?"

"And hello to you too, Vick. Stay right beside him, all right?"

Vicky rolled her eyes over being treated like she didn’t know how to take care of tiny kids, though she had no experience - some things are innate, right? - and she said, "Sure. Does Cyndi want to come too, Danielle?"

Danielle had stayed in the wading pool, playing with Cyndi (who she had baby sat several times in the last months and had slightly known when she was a senior). It was Cyndi’s mommy who answered Vicky. "That’s fine, but keep her near the wall. She doesn’t swim as well as Benji."

Benji said, "No! I do it ’lone!"

His mama said, "Benji, what is with you and Cyndi today? You can share."

"No! Danny going. It boys!"

Benji’s mama laughed and said, "Vicky, can you have gender specific floats?"

"Yeah, I saw a raft with rainbows and an innertube with seahorses that we can probably use."

There was a glut of seven to ten year-olds at the pool that day, but a dearth of two to four year-olds. And soon all but one of the girls plus two of the boys from the huge Marco Polo game (about twelve kids in all) were over acting silly for Benji and Cyndi.

One of the girls said, "Is this really your baby brother, Kathy? He is so cute!"

Kathy beamed and said, "Uh-huh. Sure is!"

But Benji said, "I not. I bigger than Kabby!" Benji often forgot to let people decide his age these days, especially when they called him a baby.

"You are?" several of the kids said with exaggerated gasps and big grins.

"Uh-huh," he said, and Kathy said, "Yeah. He just pretends to be a little boy. Right, Benji?" And Benji was glad to have her support, but didn’t see why she had laughed while she said that, or why she kept patting his bottom.

One of the girls said, "Sure. And I bet you’re real smart too. Do you know all you’re ABCs already?"

"’Course!"

"Then sing them!" the girl said.

He couldn’t understand why people were always testing him, but he didn’t mind showing off at all. "A. B. C. D. E. f. t. i. ummm." He had more important things to think about right now, at least that’s what he thought the problem was. He said, "It not letter time. It swim time!"

Vicky said, "Yeah, Suzie, stop making him do school work in the pool, or we will want to hear your nine times tables too."

Suzie said, "Ackkk. I think you did real good for during swim time, Benji," and she kissed him. So, he had to kiss her back, because that was just the nice thing to do.

The boy in Benji’s entourage said, "Hey, little kid, watch this." And he did a hand stand in the water, and then some of the girls did too.

Another girl yelled, "Watch this!" from the deep side of Benji’s float and stuck her bottom into the air, and soon all of the kids were doing that, or at least that’s what Benji thought they were doing at first, but then he realized they were showing off their surface dives and how deep they could go.

He said, "I do that! I do that!"

Vicky, who was being a hovering stewardess on his ride, said, "No, Bug, stay in the innertube," but Danny, who was the pilot and steering mechanism of the boat, looked at Benji’s mama (who had, of course, come along with Cyndi’s mommy to sit by the shallow end), and he said, "Can he get out and go under water? He wants to."

Benji responded to Vicky first, "I can!! Remember, I big really."

His mama said, "Let him get off, just keep your eyes on him."

Danny and Vicky let him slip out of the pool toy innertube, and he touched the ground in the four foot water.

The boy Kathy’s size grabbed him as he came up, and Benji said, "See! I hold breath."

His crowd of adoring elementary schoolers smiled and patted his head, and some were genuinely impressed.

"I do it ’gain," Benji said, and he squirmed loose from the boy who couldn’t have held him out of the water.

This time he wasn’t happy to just touch the bottom, he moved along the pool floor into water above Danny and Vicky’s heads. When two of the little girls yelled, "Pull him up. Hurry," Vicky, who had felt rebuked by her mother’s veto about swimming at all, insisted now that Benji be allowed to stay under as long as he wanted, but she did yank him above the surface the second he started upwards.

Now all the kids were genuinely impressed, not that they all couldn’t have gone just as deep for longer, and once Vicky had him back in water that wasn’t over their heads, they all tried to hold him, and he was passed from one to the other. He said, "See. I big!" And he gave a kiss back to all of them that kissed him, including the boy, because it was the nice thing to do.

He only did a few more dives before half his adoring fans faded away (though he still had plenty), and Benji’s interest was beginning to fade too. He would have agreed with the big Ben of last February that Kathy’s friends talked way too loud, way too fast and way, way too much.

Mamas know about these things, must be a sixth sense, or maybe it was just because his thumb was staying in his mouth more and more, and Benji’s mama waded out into the pool at just the right moment and said, "Puppy dog, did you know they have a big sand box here too? Want to go see it?"

"Oh tay. Get Cyndi to come." Cyndi still had a couple of fans too, and they were trying to teach her clapping games and nursery rhymes, but he hadn’t said that because he didn’t want her getting attention when he wasn’t; he just wanted some quieter company while he played.

"She will come along soon, but she didn’t swim as much as you did and isn’t as tired yet. I’m going to have to call you Guppy-Puppy."

"Oh tay," he said, but he didn’t think he was tired exactly.

By the time he had gotten a new coat of sun block painted on him and had just started digging, Cyndi came over, and he said, "Wanna do sand box, Cyndi?"

She said, "Pay." (Cyndi choose a bilabial plosive, rather than an alveolar one, to keep her voice out of her throat (she used Ps, not Ts, for Ks), and she dropped the long vowel that Benji always stressed in that phrase, but Benji had spent enough time with really little kids lately to have no trouble knowing she meant ’OK.’)

Then Cyndi said, "Listen..." and, as she was re-sun blocked by her mommy, she started singing "Do your ears hang low", and Benji realized she made almost everything into a bilabial plosive; well he didn’t realize that exactly, but he noticed she made lots of letters sound like Bs and Ps. And worse she got the words in the song wrong.

He said, "Dee ears hobble, not bobble!"

His mama said, "Hush, puppy. She just learned it and is doing very well."

Well she was just a real little kid, and he didn’t want to be too didactic, so he shrugged and said, "I doing roads. Oh Tay?" and Cyndi said, "Pay. I come." She hadn’t really made any other plans. "I build castle."

The country club’s sand box looked like a sand trap from the golf course that had jumped the swimming pool fence, but Benji didn’t mind, and there were even beach pails and construction toys to use. He and Cyndi played together; her building a castle, or sand pile, on one side of the pit; and he building lots of roads, or digging a hole, on the other side.

And they were doing just fine, but then Kathy and Monique and another girl came over, and they wanted everyone to work on the same project. Benji tried to be tolerant because Kathy was his littlest sister, but he thought she and her friends should be old enough to work on projects alone and not have to ask so many questions.

Even little Cyndi understood this, and she gave up on playing in the sand before Benji did, and both went back to the wading pool.

After lunch Benji and his mama and Cyndi and her mommy all went to the very back of the locker room. Both the mamas sat on the floor, and Benji didn’t know why, his mama hardly ever did that, but it was because the floor beside the wall was the only seat around with something to lean back onto.

Benji didn’t ask what she was doing; he didn’t even wonder why they had come into the locker room; he just went along with things, but when his mama pulled the top of her swimsuit down, he knew, and he climbed onto her and got ready for his fifth time, in memory, to snuzzel.

Before he set to work, Benji felt something tickling his feet, and looked up to see Cyndi’s feet beside his. He bent over and kissed her knee and she giggled as she sucked, and they kept their feet entwined through the whole meal, and he stroked hers, and her feet stroked his too,

Then, just as he got a taste, Vicky and Amber came in. He moaned, and so did Cyndi - what a bother. But his mama stroked his head, and the big girls did whisper, and he and Cyndi managed to concentrate on concentrating and ignore them.

Vicky said, "We’re going to take Kathy and Monique to the game room, since we can’t swim right after lunch."

"OK. These two are going to take naps under the table by the sand box. So look for us there."

Amber said, "I didn’t know B.B. did that already. Would it sound creepy if I asked to watch? I think it is so amazing!"

"Not creepy at all. And it is amazing."

"I can’t wait until I can nurse my own baby. It’s like so... you know." She sat down and started rubbing Benji’s little fingers as he nursed, and he hardly noticed it.

"Yeah, I know and amazing is the best word I can come up with too, Amber. But please do wait! About ten years!"

Amber said, "Oh, I will. Well, I was thinking seven years. But I can’t wait."

When Benji woke up from his nap there were two big, huge feet wearing golf cleats next to him. He knew those feet! And he climbed out from under the picnic table, strait into his daddy’s lap and licked the foam off his daddy’s beer.

His daddy didn’t like to swim because he had plastic things in his eyes that he couldn’t see without, but Benji did get to show him how well he swam underwater and how well he could build roads in the sand box. He and Cyndi got to teach both their daddies "Do Your Ears Hang Low", (but both daddies wanted the ears to wobble until they were set straight.). And when he went into the big pool with Amber and Vicky again, he shared a raft with Cyndi this time, just in case she needed any help, because she was just a real little kid who didn’t even know the right word for snuzzeling (she called it nogging.), and he held her hand in the wading pool and on the steps too the whole time so she wouldn’t fall, and she liked him taking care of her; he could tell by her smiles and her kisses.

When it was time to go, Benji wasn’t too disappointed because there was more fun to come: a barbecue at Amber and Danny’s house, and besides, everyone else was leaving too (at least everyone Benji knew). What Benji didn’t know was that he was about to have the best time of the day even before he got to Amber’s house.

When they got to the locker room, Benji and Cyndi proved that they really were big kids by pulling the Velcro straps on their swim diapers off all by themselves. But they were told they had to both take showers and had to wait for everyone else to get undressed first. You wouldn’t think swimsuits would take forever to get off, but it seemed like it did too Benji. He kind of remembered taking showers a long time ago, but he had forgotten what it was like and was apprehensive.

When Amber and Danielle and Vicky were undressed, they picked him and Cyndi up and said they would take little kids to the shower room and start. But, even though Cyndi went with the teenage girls, Benji shook his head real fast. He wanted to wait for the mamas and for Kathy and Monique.

When his mama carried him into the shower room, four of the eight shower heads were already on, and the room seemed full of water. Water was falling from everywhere. And Cyndi was standing under it doing a whole new dance, and he knew at once this was a good thing! He squirmed free from his mama and ran over to get under the shower head with Cyndi and did that dance too!

And all the girls and women started laughing, but Benji and Cyndi didn’t think they were being laughed at at all. They knew they were sharing their happiness. First Amber, then Danielle, then Vicky joined the dance.

Kathy said, "It’s Benji’s naked dance!" and she and Monique started dancing to.

"No! Cyndi’s shower dance!!" Benji said as he grabbed the baby girl’s hands and started leading her under each of the bigger people’s legs. And even the mama’s were soon dancing.