In a third-year effort to get my kids to swim, I’ve been frequenting the Y.M.C.A.  In the pool was a woman my age with three kids as young as mine.  As my kids bobbed around in the water, girls puffed up like little astronauts with built-in floatation devices, I watched as this woman trained her kids to be Olympic champions.

“Swim to the wall, push off, come back to me, and do four summersaults,” she instructed her boy.

He followed her instructions, but with three summersaults instead of four.

“That was awesome!” she praised.  “You beat your record!”

Then she turned to one of her girls.

“Do a triple back flip off the edge of the pool, follow with 100-meter butterfly, top off with twelve summersault back pike twirls, a fishtail split and three minutes of synchronized water acrobats with your siblings,” she commanded.  (Or something like that.  Until I can get my girls to stick their heads in the water, everyone else comes across as an overachieving show-off.)

The girl carried out the operation without a hitch.

I sat on the edge of the pool and watched, thinking about how I, too, should be in the pool, but I hate the shock of getting into a swimming pool in December, even if it is indoor and heated, and besides, lately the chlorine has been doing unspeakable things to my hair.  And as I watched that supermom in action, I began to feel like the suckiest mother indeed.

She seemed to be one of those people who are graceful in every aspect of life—the way she moved in the water, how she challenged her kids to reach their potentials without being a Tiger mom, how her kids were the poster children for perfect behavior from the pool all the way to the locker room.

And as I sat there, one eye on this display of familial perfection and the other at my kids, who were now whipping water toys around the pool, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen this woman a million times before.  Did I go to school with her?  It seemed to me that I remembered her being good at sports.  I tried to picture girl super-athletes from THS and projected what they’d look like twenty years older, but still, I couldn’t place her.

On the way home, it struck me that I knew exactly who she was—along with the entire state of Connecticut.

Who will be the first to name the woman in the background of this picture?

… You are scratched, limping, sweating and out of oxygen, head spinning with scavengers clinging to merry-go-rounds, beeping, buzzing, a steady stream of rapping rats with guitars, the shuffle of children searching for their next twenty-second fix.

No, you are not having hallucinations of a post-apocalyptic kiddie crackhouse.  You are at Chuck E. Cheese—specifically, the one in Manchester, Connecticut.

I have but one piece of advice.  Don’t go there.

It is not the spacious, magic-filled wonderland we all knew and loved from our birthday parties as kids.  Gone are the amusement park rides, bowling allies, ball pits (which afforded us the ecstatic pleasure of rolling about in a hideous strain of bacteria), video game arcades, children with manners, and space to freely move your arms and legs.  It is now situated in a cramped warehouse on Buckland Street, with each game or ride situated so close you can reach out and touch the next one.

Pictured above are Tyler and his best friend from school, Shane, standing before the “Ticket Muncher”—a machine that gobbles up rolls of tickets and spits out a receipt.  With every count to a hundred, their eyes bulged with dollar signs.  “One hundred….” they shouted gleefully.  “…two hundred….three hundred…THREE HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN!” they yelled, then propped the receipt in my hand as though they had just uncovered the solution to my endangered 401K plan.  They scrambled to the prize station, visions of Lego kits, scooters and motorized monster trucks in their heads.

When they got there, they spied a slinky for 7,500 tokens.  There was also a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee for 5,000.  For the girls, a generic Barbie doll for 6,000 tokens. For 347 tokens, they discovered they could buy three-inch plastic telescope, which fell apart seconds after it was in their hands.

It is a sad day when inflation hits Chuck E. Cheese.

I retract my earlier statement.

Go to Chuck E. Cheese.  There is no better way to instill your children with a crash course in Econ 101, psychology of the masses and survival of the fittest.

The world around us had erupted into flames and disintegrated into a heaping mountain of ash.  A giant chasm had opened up and swallowed all that we hold near and dear.  The walls were closing in on us.

Or so it would seem, when all three children pulled me into the bathroom, eyes burning with urgency.  Eva was hysterical.

“I dropped my bracelet in the toilet!” she cried.

“You dragged me in here like the house is on fire to tell me that?”  I reproached.  “Take it out!”

“But Mom,” Tyler said, eyes wide, and then he added with a hushed whisper, “It has pee in it.”

I peered in.  Sure enough, in the depths of the water was a small yellowish cloud.  Not enough to tint the entire bowl—the usual eye dropper’s amount that kids can hold in their pinhead-sized bladders before they’re crossing their legs and dancing.

But there was no bracelet to be found.

“There’s nothing in there,” I said.

“But I know it’s in there!” Eva sobbed.  “I felt it fall off my wrist.  I heard it splash!”

“Maybe it already started to go down the drain,” Tyler suggested.

Eva whimpered at the sheer thought of it.

I grabbed the toilet cleaner wand and poked around the drain with the handle.  Still, no bracelet.

“That was my special bracelet,” Eva wailed.  “I’ll never find another one like it ever again for a thousand infinity years!”

Actually, I’d picked up the bracelet for $5 in the crappy jewelry bin at Walmart.  But to convince her that the bracelet was replaceable would be like trying to persuade her that her puke-stained dog-chewed bunny with stuffing coming out of its throat that she’s been sleeping with since birth was unfit for the city dump.

I put down the wand and knelt before the toilet.

“What are you doing?” Tyler asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I asked, rolling up my sleeves like a surgeon prepping for surgery.  “I’m going in.”

“But it has pee in it,” he repeated.

I had to laugh at the irony of it all.  Did they have any notion of the bodily fluids I’ve encountered since I stepped on (or, arguably, crashed into) the Parent Train seven years ago?  I’ve had spit-up in my mouth, projectile vomit encrusted in my hair, pee squirted directly into my eye, poop in my fingernails and a face drenched with snotty sneezes.  A teaspoon of pee diluted in six gallons of water…bah.

And with that, I plunged.  I was in up to my elbow, poking around the drain, prodding and inspecting with as many fingers I could jam down the drain.  I came up empty-handed.

“Are you sure it fell into the water?” I asked Eva, who was staring at me with hope and disgust and admiration and horror in her eyes all at the same time.

Tyler dropped to his knees poked his head behind the toilet.  “Hey, here it is!” he exclaimed.  He scooped up the bracelet and held it to the light like it was a rare and exquisite jewel.  “It was on the floor the whole time!”

Eva grabbed her bracelet with a sigh of relief.  She looked at Tyler.  Tyler looked at her.  Then they both looked at me.

Tyler was the first one to break the silence.

“Eva…Mama stuck her hand in pee!” he yelped.

“Mama’s got pee-pee hands!”  Eva laughed so hard it’s a wonder she didn’t pee some more all over the floor.

And that’s how I plummeted from (or shall I say, was kicked clear off) my pedestal, faster than a disgraced athlete on steroids.  And while they laughed and jeered, I stood there jilted, just like Bill Cosby after his kids turned on him for feeding them chocolate cake for breakfast.

That’s it.  I’ve had it with sacrificing my time, energy, and dignity as a human being to satisfy my kids’ every needy whim.  I was put on this planet for bigger things than their amusement.  I stick my hand in toilets and instead of getting a little gratitude and respect, and all I get is their mockery and scorn.

Well, no more.  No more trading my sanity and/or sanitation for the ungracious.  I wash my hands of it.

Among other things.