After 10 minutes of Q&A, "What's your name?" "My name is..." (I always think Eminem when I hear that) He hits me with, "So where do you work?" Me: "I'm a Lifeguard," I shout, while bombing the hill in the toboggan with the groms sitting in the front.
After trudging to the top, and watching the perplexed man try and make sense of it all. (man + kids + winter + New York = Lifeguard??) Can’t be. I give the victim a reach in assist and tell him "in the long off season, I teach high school to supplement my income." After which I smile and shake hands, tell him as long as there's water (even frozen water) I'm a Lifeguard and am on duty" we usually would have a laugh and continue with whatever it is we're doing.
I started Lifeguarding in my late teens at a lake in Carmel, New York. The lake was a farm before the town decided to divert streams into the land and flood it out. There were 7 beaches on the lake. My dad wanted me to "work", like dig holes, pile rocks, cut grass, something where you toil under the hot sun and feel miserable all day long, but hey it’s work and it’s what people do right??? I played the good son and found a real “mans” job; being a day laborer, humping bundles of shingles up a ladder for a local roofer for a year. I began late summer and worked until late spring and hated it. I did all grunt work, carrying up 3 bundles every effin time I went up that ladder…. One warm spring day when the forsythia was the color of the Sun, we were tearing off an old roof on a cottage on the lake. By late afternoon I was hot as hell and dumped my last wheel barrel full of shingles into the dumpster. With sweat running down my brow I ripped off my shirt and ran down the sweeping lawn in full sprint diving into the refreshing waters where I just set down on the bottom cooling my body and listening to the sounds of silence. It was there, 10’ feet underwater where I had that Eureka moment. I exhaled exuberantly, following my bubbles to the surface.
“Im gonna be a LIFEGUARD!” I shouted, splashing about it the water. Grinning ear to
ear looking up at the guys toiling on the roof, only reassured me even more about my decision. I quickly swam to shore, ran back to my wheel barrel in soggy sneakers and worked away my final hours as grunt.
I saw and add in the wanted section for Lifeguard. This had my name all over it; I grew up with the NYC reservoir in my backyard and learned to swim while walking. Diving from trees, taking rock taxis, underwater swim races, playing drown and cliff climbing were the games I played every day with my friends. Water and all its associated forms and properties were and remain the elixir of life to me. Becoming a Lifeguard was a no brainer to me. That Spring I quit humping shingles and took the LG test, not knowing back then that it would be the best decision I ever made in my life, and by Memorial Day was in a chair working side by side with Lake Carmel's finest scanning the waters filled with happy bathers for signs of distress of silent drowning.
BIG BREAKFAST
Those two words uttered among retired LCLG's conjure up visions of collecting orders from the 20 or so guards on duty and making a deli run for bacon egg & cheeses on hard rolls, toasted Everthing Baegles with cream cheese, the Daily News, bags of Cool Ranch Doritos, Coffee's, Yoo-Hoo's, Gatoraids, Mountan Dews, and other sugary sodas. We all had cooler's of water to hydrate all day. I don't remember drinking much bottled water in the 80's. Rookies groomed the beaches and set up the chairs while second year and up, sat on blankets under the shade of willow trees reading the sports section while chowing down on greasy deli breakfast sandwhiches and washing them down with hearty slugs of Mountain Dew or Yoo-Hoo, which were followed by voluminous belly belching and sophmoric humor.
The rookies had it bad, they would be paddeled; running through a gauntlet of LG's who all had wooden oars and would smack your ass as hard as they could as you passed by was one right of passage from rookie to seasoned guard. I knew some guards who drilled holes into their boards to reduce wind drag while they were swinging through the air.
After trudging to the top, and watching the perplexed man try and make sense of it all. (man + kids + winter + New York = Lifeguard??) Can’t be. I give the victim a reach in assist and tell him "in the long off season, I teach high school to supplement my income." After which I smile and shake hands, tell him as long as there's water (even frozen water) I'm a Lifeguard and am on duty" we usually would have a laugh and continue with whatever it is we're doing.
I started Lifeguarding in my late teens at a lake in Carmel, New York. The lake was a farm before the town decided to divert streams into the land and flood it out. There were 7 beaches on the lake. My dad wanted me to "work", like dig holes, pile rocks, cut grass, something where you toil under the hot sun and feel miserable all day long, but hey it’s work and it’s what people do right??? I played the good son and found a real “mans” job; being a day laborer, humping bundles of shingles up a ladder for a local roofer for a year. I began late summer and worked until late spring and hated it. I did all grunt work, carrying up 3 bundles every effin time I went up that ladder…. One warm spring day when the forsythia was the color of the Sun, we were tearing off an old roof on a cottage on the lake. By late afternoon I was hot as hell and dumped my last wheel barrel full of shingles into the dumpster. With sweat running down my brow I ripped off my shirt and ran down the sweeping lawn in full sprint diving into the refreshing waters where I just set down on the bottom cooling my body and listening to the sounds of silence. It was there, 10’ feet underwater where I had that Eureka moment. I exhaled exuberantly, following my bubbles to the surface.
“Im gonna be a LIFEGUARD!” I shouted, splashing about it the water. Grinning ear to
ear looking up at the guys toiling on the roof, only reassured me even more about my decision. I quickly swam to shore, ran back to my wheel barrel in soggy sneakers and worked away my final hours as grunt.
I saw and add in the wanted section for Lifeguard. This had my name all over it; I grew up with the NYC reservoir in my backyard and learned to swim while walking. Diving from trees, taking rock taxis, underwater swim races, playing drown and cliff climbing were the games I played every day with my friends. Water and all its associated forms and properties were and remain the elixir of life to me. Becoming a Lifeguard was a no brainer to me. That Spring I quit humping shingles and took the LG test, not knowing back then that it would be the best decision I ever made in my life, and by Memorial Day was in a chair working side by side with Lake Carmel's finest scanning the waters filled with happy bathers for signs of distress of silent drowning.
BIG BREAKFAST
Those two words uttered among retired LCLG's conjure up visions of collecting orders from the 20 or so guards on duty and making a deli run for bacon egg & cheeses on hard rolls, toasted Everthing Baegles with cream cheese, the Daily News, bags of Cool Ranch Doritos, Coffee's, Yoo-Hoo's, Gatoraids, Mountan Dews, and other sugary sodas. We all had cooler's of water to hydrate all day. I don't remember drinking much bottled water in the 80's. Rookies groomed the beaches and set up the chairs while second year and up, sat on blankets under the shade of willow trees reading the sports section while chowing down on greasy deli breakfast sandwhiches and washing them down with hearty slugs of Mountain Dew or Yoo-Hoo, which were followed by voluminous belly belching and sophmoric humor.
The rookies had it bad, they would be paddeled; running through a gauntlet of LG's who all had wooden oars and would smack your ass as hard as they could as you passed by was one right of passage from rookie to seasoned guard. I knew some guards who drilled holes into their boards to reduce wind drag while they were swinging through the air.
