I was the head lifeguard...

yes, me.

It's no secret that I don't look like the strongest swimmer out there...and, I wasn't. I was the weakest swimmer, actually. I also had the worst swimming time. I also looked and was the weakest, just in terms of general muscle health.

During a lifeguarding class, my lifeguard partner (who is now my best friend, Danielle) told me, while practicing her skills as I feigned drowning, that saving my life was equivalent to dragging a stick out of the water. She was concerned about how her abilities would hold up in a more real world scenario.

What was even more concerning though was my lack of any recognizable skills.

Every other lifeguard except for me had been on the swim team in high school. Every other lifeguard could swim 20 laps in under 10 minutes. I got 10:06, promptly slit my wrists and then tried again the following week. To be fair though, the lifeguard swimming next to me did most of his 20 laps using the backstroke...and, that was fine and allowed. Because, if someone is drowning and it's your responsibility to swim out and save them, the backstroke is clearly the best option for a successful completion of that task.

So, this all begs to question, why did I become a lifeguard and how did I then become the head lifeguard? Obviously that journey involved a whole lot of careful traversing which is now worthy of a blog post? Welllllllllll, not really.

The short version is that during my junior year of high school, my mom thought I'd make a good lifeguard. I believed her because I was decent at swimming, and I had made it all the way from "minnow" to "shark" during those lessons at the YMCA...so, there had to be something untapped there. Luckily, I was also very interested in sitting in a chair all summer long and working on my tan while getting paid a pretty high hourly rate.

The decision was made. I then went to a one week lifeguarding class, did a pretty shitty job the whole time and ended up as a lifeguard. I then continued to do a pretty shitty job for about 4 summers in a row and ended up as the head lifeguard for summers number 5 and 6. Apparently, seniority (and maybe the fact that I was responsible), instead of an unparalleled swimming skillset, is paramount when it comes to potentially saving the lives of drowning victims. This line of thinking is good news for my future career path.

It's important to note that I wasn't a lifeguard at a beach. I was a lifeguard at a cushy pool/lake in a man-made lake community in the northwest corner of CT. It was fairly small, so after a short while, you knew everyone and became familiar with all the kids' swimming abilities. Oh, he's fine, I don't need to watch him.

The lifeguards biggest issues here had nothing to do with saving lives. It was pretty much a whole lot of "no running" and "no flips in the deep end". But, we also mixed it up with:
1) Consistently making sure the mentally handicapped 40 year old had on his water diaper any time he came to the pool
2) Carefully watching the obese man, who used an oxygen tank, sit on his noodle (because none of us knew what the hell we'd do if............)
3) Helping the weekend New Yorker kids find their nannies when their mothers were no where in sight
4) Gossiping - that was also very important
5) Making everyone get out of the pool for 30 minutes at even the slightest sound of thunder

My biggest challenge as head lifeguard was getting teenagers to show up to work according to the schedule I made each week. Who would have thought teenagers would be unreliable? Ohhh, you got drunk aaaand high last night? What nerve I have for scheduling your shift at 11am...please, proceed with taking the day off. That's my bad. 

Turns out my actual lifeguarding skills weren't that important after all.