I cried when I got up at 7 AM on Monday morning to wait in line for an hour, and then repeated the process Tuesday morning in a hot, humid and stuffy hall to be registered.
In the recession, everyone's looking for ways to save money and this includes me. So much so that I suffered the indignity of a freezing cold pool (which the kid didn't like much, either) with about 30 other toddlers and their parents.
With traffic from the nearby FDR Drive drowning out the instructions of the singular instructor -- for whom billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg couldn't see fit to budget a bullhorn -- we paddled around aimlessly for 20 minutes. An aquatics program Nazi told my husband he could not sit by the pool and read a newspaper.
The instructor, a woman, came over not to help my daughter blow bubbles but to tell me that it was "inappropriate" that the baby was wearing only a swim diaper and was effectively topless (gasp), because, "um, it's a girl, right?" I realized that you get what you don't pay for in bureaucratic programs and methinks we're not going back tomorrow.
A paid swim class elsewhere costs in the area of $250, and I'm pretty sure you can hear the teacher and avoid hypothermia and rudeness. While there are plenty of opportunities to experience great free activities in the New York City Parks this summer, skip this one.
