So What Is Really Going on in There?

My first post posed the question, "What is he doing in there?"  which ultimately went unanswered.  Strategy, my dear friends, strategy.  Leave the the curious desiring more and hopefully they return.  Given that, it only seems appropriate that the next matter of business would be to pull back the curtain on our bronzed Oz and give the readers what was promised.  So Toto, my furry friend, would you please do the honors?

Anyone briefly get the image of the Coppertone girl and her hairy harasser?  I did, except it was an elderly fellow sporting a turn of the last century bathing suit and looking oh so white.  Hum...

So what is going on inside the lifeguard tower?  Simply put: the guard is watching the water.  Yes, it is quite possible that you haven't seen the guard emerge for hours.  Yes, there may be very little or no surf.  Heck, the water may be so cold as to dissuade even our most intrepid bather from anything other than a toe test, but it doesn't matter.  Not in the least.  That lifeguard is watching the water...oh, and the beach around him/her.

Before I continue I should note the following, first this blog is about ocean lifeguarding.  I did spend one year at a municipal pool and so, if appropriate, will post about pool policy/etiquette, but this is a blog about those men and women who provide protection at our best resource for play and exercise  - the beach.  Additionally, as the discipline is one pursued and executed by both sexes, future references to lifeguards will find the he and she interchangeable.

Now back to the matter at hand, the lifeguard watching the water.  Eyes to binoculars, binos to beach, beach to water, up and down, back and forth.  She is constantly searching for the next potential rescue.  Notice that I wrote "potential."  That is of particular importance.  Why?  The lifeguard doesn't wait until the crap zips itself into the Vornado.  She doesn't want a manageable situation stirring itself into a shit storm of panicked, drowning swimmers.  The lifeguard is looking for blissfully unaware swimmers splashing their way towards the maw of a hungry rip current.  A rip current looking to suck them and their fabric covered styrofoam boogie boards out to sea.  (Those boards don't boogie by the way, more like one-legged wiggle.)   In being attentive, she is able to prevent most, if not all, the swimmers from an undesired reminder of their own mortality.  Instead, she directs them to a much more desirable location for cavorting.  In some cases that might be their car.

That's why we watch the water.  Lifeguards do not enjoy the benefit firefighters do.  We don't go about our day waiting for our next call.  We actively scan for our next rescue, our next first aid, our next public assist, or whatever else we may be called to address.  Not only do we make the call - dial 911 so to speak - we then respond to the emergency as well.  If we are not looking then that call goes unnoticed and someone, or worse, people lose their lives.  Try going home with that at the end of your day.

And not every emergency starts in the water or at its edge.  No, the lifeguard is also paying attention to all that is going on around him.  Consider this: if you saw a family of five traipse on down from the parking lot lugging coolers and chairs with skin that makes Snow White look Tahitian, dressed in cargo shorts and tank tops with no apparent signs of swimsuits but carrying boogie boards and inner tubes, what would you think (other than that was a long-ass sentence?)  Would you think this group has been to the beach before?  Would you think that they actually know how to use their water equipment in surf that is occasionally head high?  Would you think it would be a swell idea for them to just go ride the wild surf in their cargo shorts and tank tops?  I'm guessing "No," and if I guessed right then you did as well.

So what do you do?  If the beach allows you to do so, head on over, introduce yourself, and in an oh so pleasant fashion suggest that they keep it shallow and then explain why.  Now this group could end up surprising you, and at times this does happen, but exceedingly more often than not the opposite proves to be the case.  I guess in this day and paranoid age this approach is called profiling.  I call it protecting the public from themselves and arming them with information that will prove useful throughout the rest of their lives because that intervention may have just extended theirs beyond the day.  And, as often is the case, they end up thanking you, follow your advice, and share it with others when they return home.

By the way, you tell them about sunscreen too.

So that is what the lifeguard is doing.  Watching the water.  Watching the beach.  He's not reading the paper.  She's not flipping through the latest issue of Surfer.  He's not updating his Facebook status or checking out his fantasy football results.  She's not painting her nails or catching some zzz's behind those dark shades of hers. No, they are just scanning their way through the day, sending out their danger sonar pings, hoping that nothing comes back but prepared if it does.  See, that is the thing.  Most days a lifeguard never knows if something is going to happen.  On big surf days with a crowded beach, it is easy to figure that out.  The whole place is a hazard zone and the day is going to be relentless in terms of emergencies - real or potential.  It's the calm, quiet, overcast days that are the worst.  The lifeguard never knows when someone is going to attempt suicide, or radically overestimate his surfing ability, or go for a swim when she don't know how to (yes, this is separate from suicide, and, yes, I have rescued this type of person - on numerous occasions.)  The lifeguard doesn't know the "when" or the "where" or the "if" and so he does the only thing he can do.  He watches the water.

As for remaining in the tower, the best sunscreen is a building.

Next post, believe it or not, it is going to be umbrellas.  Might seem inconsequential, but given what I've witnessed there's some ignorance that needs addressing, and in doing so I just might save a few individuals from the painful groin shots given by the runaway sun shade.

© Copyright 2011 David S. Carpenter.  All Rights Reserved.