For the past year or so I have had the desire to take Sammy to this indoor rock climbing gym here in San Diego, the Solid Rock Gym. I went with some buddies for a bachelor party around ten or fifteen years ago. It was a lot of fun, and I have wanted to go back, but it was one of those things that got lost in the shuffle of getting married and having kids. City Tree has a rock wall (that I, as a school board member, approved a few years back) that Sammy gets to use at the end of his day. It is more horizontal than vertical, and the little guys aren't allowed to go above a certain line for safety. Sammy loves it, and consequently, mastered it very quickly. Since he has many physical and mental attributes that lend themselves to climbing (strong, small, brave), I thought he might be up for something a little more challenging. He was.
We got to the place a little after 11 this morning. I would have preferred to go a bit earlier, but that is when it opens during the week. I guess there is not a lot of demand for indoor rock climbing on a Tuesday morning in January, who knew? I had called a few months back to look into it, asked about age restrictions, things like that. The only limit they place on how old the kids have to be was:
'If your kid can walk then they can climb.'
A profound statement from someone who obviously was trying to separate me from my seventeen dollars, and, if I am a little honest, probably loves climbing and wants others to love it as well.
So, back to arrival... After paying and signing away any rights we had, the friendly, but not really comfortable around small kids, worker showed me how to get into my harness and how to safely hook up all the ropes. Into my harness I went, into his harness Sammy went and, zoom, straight to the wall we flew. I walked, Sammy flew. As Sammy scrambled up his first wall, with the worker looking on to make sure we didn't screw anything up, the worker was just amazed. He said several times how impressed he was with Sammy. He asked how old he was, and finally stated,
'I have never seen a little guy like that do so well. Is this his first time?'
The savant was born.
A quick side note here. Sammy was scrambling up this wall. He was probably thirty feet up in the air. He gets to a hard spot, he's looking around for a way to keep going. He turns, and looks down at us, and it finally hits him. Oh boy am I up high! You could tell he did not know what to do. Getting up there had been his whole thing, he had never given one second's consideration to how he was getting down. So he stared down at us. Not upset, just sort of concerned.
'You are doing great, buddy. Do you want to keep going, or are you ready to come down?'
'I am ready to go down.' He said in a mostly calm voice.
'OK, all you have to do is let go. I have the rope, I will lower you down.'
Silence, just looking at me like I am crazy.
'It's OK, buddy, I got you. If you let go of the wall, the rope will hold you up and I can let you down slowly.'
More silence. Doubt was all over his face, but he tentatively let more and more of his weight onto the rope. Finally he decided to take that leap of faith and there he was, just floating above us all.
As soon as he was down it was off to another spot in the gym to find a different wall to climb. Up, up, up, he went. Quickly, confidently, he would scramble up these walls. Never falling, the only time he needed me spotting him was when he got to the top or got stuck in some spot and decided he wanted to take the quick way down.
At one point one of the few other people in the gym (if you are an adult and you are in the Solid Rock Climbing gym on a Tuesday morning, you are hard core) just stopped what he was doing (I think it was called bouldering) and watched Sammy. This guy had a big smile on his face. You could tell he loved climbing, and he loved seeing this teeny little guy who also had a love for climbing.
'He's a natural. He's not just strong, he has great instincts.'
Thanks, buddy. It was around this point that Suzy looks over at me and says something like,
'He is having a great time, he really loves it. Do we really want him to be a rock climber?'
No, no, I don't think we do. One thing we noticed, though, Sammy was very conscientious about all the precautions you need to take. He would always make sure that I was ready before going up, he was very careful about attaching all of the safety gear every time he started up a wall. It was like he was born to climb. I know that I am being a bit dramatic, but that is what it felt like.
We were there for just over an hour. Sammy must have climbed up the walls ten times. At the end you could tell that his arms were getting tired. He would slip and not make it up spots that he had scrambled through thirty minutes prior. He, of course, denied any such thing. Always wanting to do just one more wall. Finally we were able to convince him that we would be back, soon. My only regret of the day was that I wasn't there to hear him share about the experience with his best friend, Daniel. I want to be a fly on the wall during those conversations when he talks about it.
I was thinking that I was going to entitle this blog post, 'Expectations'. I had these expectations about this, I really wanted Sammy to like it. I thought he would be great at it, and I was hoping it was something that would capture his interest. I was going to be pretty disappointed if it did not work out. Often times as a parent I have had expectations of how something is going to go with one of the boys, and it is difficult because so rarely do those expectations meet what reality is. One of the major exceptions to that rule was the first time I took Daniel to LegoLand. My expectation was that he would love it, and we would have a great time. He did, we did, and it is one of my favorite memories of something I shared with Daniel. So, I was hoping that Sammy would take to this like I thought he could. He did, he loved it. I hope that I can remember this day for a long time, because it made me so happy to see Sammy so happy. So I chose not to call this post, 'Expectations', because that would mean this experience was about me. It was not, this day was about Sammy. All you buddy. Way to go. Good job.
No comments:
Post a Comment