By: Angela Gillaspie © July 2000

I've started calling my three-year-old son Nicky, "Super Nicky." Why? Dressed in his Superman outfit, Nicky is faster than spilled cherry Kool-aid! More powerful than a Tylenol suppository! Able to leap over small appliances in a single bound! He's SUPER NICKY!

Recently, Super Nicky had an encounter with the YMCA's diving board.

For the first part of the summer, Super Nicky splashed around the one-foot baby pool at the YMCA and his older sister and brother (Evil Empress Ashley and her wicked sidekick Josh the Joker) swam in the large pool. For some unknown reason, baby pool's pump broke and the baby pool ceased to work.

Now when we visit the YMCA, the empress and her sidekick would jump right in the big pool and swim like two fish, leaving Super Nicky unhappily sitting on the side.

"Won't you get in the big pool with Mommy?" I asked.

Super Nicky sulked, "No, I'll sink."

Apparently he needed his super-duper life jacket (and a fair amount of coaxing from Mommy) before he would descend into the balmy depths of crystal blue chlorinated water. It wasn't long until I eased him in and our hero was at home splashing, giggling, and rescuing beetle carcasses caught in the drains.

During one visit, Daddy asked the empress and the joker if they were ready to jump off the diving board. This was a new trick, so both of Super Nicky's siblings were apprehensive, but they followed Daddy to the board and listened to his instructions on where and when to jump. As they proudly grabbed their noses and plopped into the water, Super Nicky decided that he was ready to jump too. After all, he was an invincible super hero.

Being a mom and knowing that my baby can't even go underwater and much less swim, I vetoed this. Daddy assured me that Super Nicky would be fine, so I swam up next to the diving board to catch him -- just to be sure.

Super Nicky ran the length of the board and leapt off the end (not holding his nose). He surfaced with this shocked look on his face and yelled "Mommy! Help!"

I grabbed him and a huge grin broke out on his face. "Didja see me?" he asked.

Faking a smile, I nodded to him as I experienced fear and nausea (very similar to the feelings I had when I watched the movie Jaws for the first time). I decided that Daddy could handle Super Nicky, because I just couldn't continue to watch our hero subject himself to potential misfortune.

Halfway across the pool, I looked back to see Super Nicky jump again. Poised on the edge of the board, he hesitated. He took one step back, tucked his head under, bent over at the waist, and jumped, falling headfirst onto the diving board and rolling into the water. It reminded me of those old tapes of Gerald Ford falling on his face from the middle of the airplane stairs.

Daddy plunged into the water to grab Super Nicky, and I exploded from the pool to meet them at the pool's edge. Daddy heaved Super Nicky into my arms and our hero immediately began to wail.

The lifeguard quickly slid down the ladder from her post and she examined the large knot beginning to swell on the side of Super Nicky's head. I held an ice pack to his head and rocked him back and forth. With thoughts of drowning, decapitation, disfigurement, or the possibility of him turning into a liberal democrat, I said a prayer of thanks that his injury wasn't as devastating as it could have been.

When his screaming subsided a bit, I asked him what he was trying to do.

He snubbed, "I was tryin' to do a flip."

"Honey, you can't swim. You can't do a flip, even Mommy can't do a flip," I consoled.

He replied, "Uh hum, I can too! I'm a big boy."

Yes, he's a big boy all right. In his short three years on this earth, he's already been to the emergency room for a broken nose and a cut finger. Plus, he's visited a neurologist for shaking his head so hard that it knocked the fluid in his inner ear off balance and made him dizzy for three solid days. This isn't counting all of the calls to the Poison Control Center that I've made for his ingestion of Tums, Pepcid, and Crepe Myrtle berries.

Tucking him in bed that night (in his Superman pajamas, of course), I told him, "Super Nicky-bear, you really scared Mommy today. No more flips, OK?"

He looked up at me sleepily and said, "OK Mommy, tomorrow I'll do a cannut ball so I won't hit my hayyud."

Great. I'll pack some ice and alert the lifeguards.

Stay tuned for more SouthernAngel's Wild Kid Columns!