Thanks for your help Murray

Every Saturday morning, my kids have swimming lessons at the YMCA. They complain like crazy about how much they hate swimming lessons, but once they're in the pool, they never want to leave.

My daughter has her lesson, followed by my son. My daughter stays in the "warm pool" while my son has his lesson. All I ask is that she checks in with me before she runs off.

Yesterday, during the check-in, I noticed that she didn't have her swimming goggles. She told me she left them on the side of the pool, there were some older kids playing there, they're gone, let's get on with life.

Not so fast.

Somehow she has managed to lose the following (in order):

Green ones, red ones, teal ones, grey, pink, white and this pair.

To round out the list, the pair immediately before these ("the fish ones") split in half under mysterious circumstances.

Goggles don't cost a fortune, but enough's enough.

Her swimming instructor, Murray, a kid I'll guess to be about 16-years-old, came by to tell me that they looked everywhere, not sure what happened, but he'll keep an eye out for them and give them back to my daughter next week if they're found.

Murray, Murray, Murray...

We both know that you're not going to find them, and even if you did, you wouldn't remember to give them back next week.

I asked my daughter to look for her goggles on the head of a theiving kid (I may have worded it differently) while she played in the warm pool and I returned to the viewing area/cafeteria to stew about the loss.

While I sat and stewed, I thought about setting up a check point at the door where every child would have their swim bag inspected for stolen goggles. Kids who tried to make a run for it would be tackled in the parking lot. Too many things could go wrong with this plan, among them, kids making a run for it look too similar to kids simply running and I couldn't afford to tackle that many kids before my plan earned me a lifetime ban from the YMCA.

No, a better plan would be to retrace my daughter's steps and see if we could do what Murray could not (in 10 seconds)-find the goggles. When my daughter was ready to come out of the pool, I asked her to tell me the whole story again. She said she had left the goggles on the side of the pool and that she thinks one of the older kids had kicked them into the pool. This seemed like a critical piece of information that was left out of the original version! I knew we were onto something.

I asked her to take me back to the exact spot where the kicking may have occurred and she said we weren't allowed to go there during a lesson. To a guy who was nearly tackling kids, pool rules were clearly to be ignored and we boldly walked to the deep end.

There, on the bottom, were the missing goggles. Within seconds, we had a lifeguard help us retrieve the goggles and the day was saved.

People use the word "hero" too easily these days...

Just kidding. But, I do hope these goggles might last the summer.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the name "Murray" was last popular as a baby name in the 1960's. I looked it up.