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This started out as an email I sent to the Australian OzAutism list in June 2003.
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Yesterday I was swapping swimming pool stories with another person who has taken groups from special schools there, and I thought I'd share some real life situations with you.
You all know about the gender imbalance in schools, so you'll understand that most of the staff on the school bus are female but that most of the students are male. Ideally, there should be at least two male staff members on a swimming excursion but because of illnesses or other commitments, it doesn't always happen. So, with up to 18 students, imagine this:
"David, we wait until we're in the change room before we take our clothes off. Good boy! Waiting! Walk with me."
"Everybody stay together" (yeah, like hell!!). "OK, we'll use these two benches" (and hopefully not the showers or a toilet cubicle). "Good, you've all got your clothes off. Now take out your bathers and put them on. Richard, yours are inside out. Mark, yours are on backwards. Take them off and turn them around. Yes, Mark, then put them back on. Peter, did I say to run out the door without your bathers on? We always wear bathers in the pool area!!"
There's always a group of old Italian men lounging around, quite naked, in the change room. The Roman baths never died away, they were just rebuilt in outposts of the Italian Diaspora. They chat to each other in their own language and take absolutely no interest in the play of events around them. The lack of interest is returned in spades.
Now at every swimming pool there's a group of elderly ladies in the lane nearest the pool's edge, doing slow aquarobics. Complete with pleated one-piece costumes and diving caps which they bought for 35 shillings ($3.50) back in 1955. And a superbly fit and tanned twenty-something Nazi playing fast music at enormous volume and shouting over it: "SWING, SWING, SWING THOSE ARMS LADIES."
Sometimes Peter (the boy who hasn't understood about bathers) manages to get out the change room door on the pool side. He manages this because the female staff who are supposed to be guarding it are chatting to each other and you can be sure they'll blame me for letting him get away in the first place while I was helping Mark understand exactly which way his bathers should go on.
A small, pale-pink bomb lands right in amongst the elderly ladies, completely swamping them and drenching the Nazi at poolside, and she sounds something like this: "SWING, SWING, SWING SWING...SHIT!!! CAN'T YOU KEEP THAT BOY UNDER CONTROL? DON'T YOU KNOW YOU HAVE TO WEAR BATHERS IN THE POOL AREA???" Meanwhile, the elderly ladies have recovered enough to have murder in their eyes while Peter is rescued by the female staff and has to wait with a towel around him until I eventually emerge with his bathers.
Anyway, once the kids are all into their bathers, they can be passed to the female staff at poolside and I'm then free to sort out their clothes as best I can (because they will have probably been dumped in one big pile) and put them all into bags. Then to get changed myself.
So far, it's been easy, believe it or not. The hard part is when they come out of the water.
Up to 18 students enter the change room and we find that maybe three classes from the local primary school are occupying most of the benches as they change intobathers. Meanwhile, my group has uniformly divested itself of their bathers, dropping then anywhere. Some can dry themselves, after a fashion. Others will see that drying is the next thing to do and copy, after a fashion. Some others just stand there waiting for me to dry them myself. After this happens a few times, you pass a course which could be called Speed Drying 101: How to dry an autistic child in ten seconds or less. The rest have headed for the showers, and some of those have learned to lock themselves into a stall because the chances of having a nice, hot shower are much better. Never mind the noise and entreaty on the other side of the door.
The noise at first is terrific and upsetting my group but when I call out "OK, KIDS, DRY YOURSELVES" there's a sudden eerie silence. Even the old Italians stop talking. Who needs to be told to dry themselves? The primary teachers have twigged and are trying hard to keep order among their students without actually looking either at me or any of the kids in my care.
The primary kids now think they're at a circus. Once dry, most of my group have to be helped in some way to dress. Some can do it all, after a fashion, but after a fashion isn't good enough for the female staff or the kids' mothers. Others have to have each item of clothing handed to them, right side out and right way around. Still others have to be physically dressed.
Finally, it's all done. The kids are passed through to the female staff. Then I can start persuading the kids locked into shower stalls to open the door. This can take time. Once it's done, I repeat the procedure above. At last, I can get dressed (I'm already dry after all this time). There is one minute to bus time, except I remember that I'm the bus driver today so I take three minutes just because I can.
Meantime a primary kid comes up to me and says: "One of your kids took my jocks/socks/bathers". I just smile at him and say: "Have a nice day" while simultaneously vanishing into the corridor.
Next day, there's a note in someone's communication book from a mother saying: "Johnny came home yesterday with the wrong singlet/jocks/socks/bathers" and it's presented to me triumphantly by a female staff member who has no idea how close she's coming to being told exactly what to do with that book.
So folks, if
a) You have a child and,
b) Your child goes to a special school and
c) Your child goes swimming with a school group in a public pool......
....then mark
all his clothes if you want to be sure of seeing them again.
Thanks for listening. :-)