Blindness Bloopers at the Pool

Usually we try to present ourselves as pretty savvy and “with it”, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. WE have our fair share of embarrassing moments, usually some kind of blindness blooper that keeps us humble. We recently had two back to back which I thought worth sharing for kicks and giggles.

Last Saturday we took our kids over to the pool for the evening. At one point, our son needed to go to the bathroom, so Jesse offered to take him. A few minutes later, my daughter was asking what was taking them so long and looked across the way towards the restrooms. She then told me that “Daddy was coming out of the women’s bathroom”. She wanted to run over and find out what was going on and tell Daddy he’d gone to the wrong place, but I told her that Daddy was capable and I’m sure there was some

explanation, and that they probably hadn’t used the women’s bathroom. Sure enough though, when Jesse returned, he was extremely embarrassed and upset and admitted that they had in fact gone to the wrong one. Apparently at first, our son had gone into the men’s and then stopped and ran out as Jesse was coming in behind him and said it was “not the boys’ bathroom.” So, Jesse then followed our son into the second bathroom. In our son’s defense, to him, he’d gone to the right bathroom because he was a boy and he went to the bathroom that he always uses. He’s three and I always take him to the bathroom—the women’s bathroom even though I often have told him that he goes to the girls’ bathroom with me because he is little. . In Jesse’s defense, he doesn’t go with us to the pool very often, so he wasn’t familiar with the bathroom set up. He also reminded me that there are no tactile signs on the doors of either, and no one right there to ask so he thought he could trust our three year-old, especially since he first ran into one and then came out and switched to the other. Needless to say, he figured it out as they were exiting and a lady was coming inside.

Not to be outdone, or maybe to stand in solidarity with my husband, I committed my own blindness blooper twenty minutes later. I decided to go buy some ice cream sandwiches from the snack bar for us and pulled a $10 out of the beach bag. I strolled over to the window, placed my order, and handed the cashier the bill, so proud that I actually had cash as I seldom carry any. After a moment, he hesitated and handed me the bill back reporting that it wasn’t a real bill. It was in fact, a very realistic looking piece of play money from our children’s cash register. I found it on the floor in my office a few weeks ago and quickly nose read it with my Swiss cheese vision, folded it accordingly (I fold my bills in different ways to identify them) and tucked it in my wallet. Red faced and apologizing profusely, I reassured the cashier that I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on him. I quickly canceled the order and went back to my table to hide. Let’s just say that Jesse had a good laugh and felt better after that.

Thankfully, we’ve been going to this pool for the last five summers and know a lot of the members and have demonstrated more capable behavior in the past. The whole situation did give Jesse and I a good laugh though once the embarrassment wore off.