Near Drownings

The near drownings mentioned in my "Courtneyology" aren't as exciting as they might seem. One little kid jumped on my head as we were practicing the art of jumping off the diving board for the first time and almost drowned me. I swear, I think I stayed under the water for at least 2 minutes wondering how I was ever going to get above the surface with a frightened child giving me the death grip on my neck and kicking me under with his feet! I thought to myself in that instance, "I'm going to die." Then, from out of nowhere, I got some strength and kicked as hard as I could only to come up for a breath. I saw his proud mother on the edge of the pool shouting praises to her son. So, I saved a very scared little child from getting his head wet, but risked my own life.

Another time a 4 year old jumped off a diving board into the deep end - couldn't swim. I stood up, stripped off my shirt, threw my whistle and sunglasses and jumped in with my flip flops on and swam to the drowning child. All the other lifeguards came running over -- "what happened," they asked? "The kid jumped off the diving board and couldn't swim," I said. "We didn't hear a whistle!" They responded. I did not blow my whistle! I was the manager and didn't blow my whistle! To me, there's more important things to do like save a child than blow a whistle! It was not a textbook save.

In Provo, at the Vet Pool, another kid was playing with his friend who was a strong simmer. The strong swimmer loved to swim back and forth across the deep end of the pool. Strong swimmer asked weak swimmer to swim with him. After two scary attempts at swimming across the pool, weak swimmer got tired and forgot to move his arms and legs. A distressed swimmer he became, so what did I do?! I jumped in with all my clothes on - swimsuit, shorts, tank and whistle. I brought the poor child to the edge of the pool and told him and his friend to only play where they can touch. Strong swimmer's mom comes running over and says, "I'm so sorry, Lifeguard, I didn't know he couldn't swim!" The she goes to her son, the strong swimmer and says, "Stong Swimmer, we're never bringing him again!" Poor, embarrassed, weak swimmer. And, guess what else? The other lifeguards came running again! What happened they ask. I go through the shpill . . . kid almost drowned . . . blah . . blah . . blah . . . . "Did you blow your whistle?" They ask. "We didn't hear a whistle!" they say. No, I didn't blow my whistle! Twice I failed at a text book save, but that's not that important, right? The only thing that matters in the real world is that the kid didn't drown!

Ok, so, my saves weren't that spectacular - I never had to administer mouth to mouth or anything, but they were saves nonetheless.