Right now I feel physically ill.
If you've watched the news tonight, you saw a piece on Lake Compounce - there was a freak accident involving a tree branch, and two guests are in the hospital, condition unknown. I know that now, only after turning on the news after I got home.
I was a lifeguard at the waterpark at Lake Compounce for two years. This year is the first that I'm not lifeguarding - I chose to switch over to Cash Control, and I spend my work days in an air-conditioned vault, wearing the requisite green polo shirt of most Lake Compounce employees. It's hard to describe being an Ellis & Associates lifeguard at Lake Compounce - you don't know unless you are/were one.
A few years back, there was a drowning at the lake. The guards who were on duty that night were my trainers and co-workers during my first summer. One of the best guards I know was the one who eventually found the victim that night. You never saw his name in the paper, or his face on TV. He didn't work at a state park, and he didn't have one of those heroic-looking rescues that everybody talks about and admires, and thinks of when they think of lifeguards saving people. He was just a kid who took his job damn seriously, a kid who walked around in the kiddie pool carrying a rescue tube, a kid who watched hundreds of people come down the Lights-Out chute, a kid who watched like a hawk everything that went on in his area of responsibility. We scanned the bottoms of 3-foot pools, we walked around the buoys in the relax pools, we kept our whistles in our mouths and gloves in our packs, we knew the Jimmy-Jimmy drill in our sleep. We wore dorky orange t-shirts and blue trunks, always had sunglasses, always had a cup or bottle of water nearby, always got rotated late, always were too hot or too cold. For seven dollars an hour we stood, scanned, whistled, yelled, watched. If you did it right, if you took it as seriously as I did, you were damn scared every time you took your spot. You thought about what you would do if that little kid went under, if that older man had a heart attack, if somebody choked. You were always a little terrified.
Tonight I drove home with a sinking feeling in my gut, the feeling that something had happened at last. You'd think that since I'm not a part of it anymore, it wouldn't matter. But it didn't work that way. For a while I thought that whatever happened had happened in the waterpark, and that that was it. The thing that you try to prepare for and that you train for.....something really bad. It shook me up pretty badly.
I'm not there anymore partly because of the fear - the fear that something would happen under my watch, and that what happened after that would be my responsibility. Seven dollars and forty-five cents an hour is not a big enough incentive to be the one responsible for all those peoples' safety. It's a relief in a way, but a small part of me thinks I'm missing out.
Isn't it ironic that I'm paid more now for handling money, than I ever was for handling people's safety?
If you've watched the news tonight, you saw a piece on Lake Compounce - there was a freak accident involving a tree branch, and two guests are in the hospital, condition unknown. I know that now, only after turning on the news after I got home.
I was a lifeguard at the waterpark at Lake Compounce for two years. This year is the first that I'm not lifeguarding - I chose to switch over to Cash Control, and I spend my work days in an air-conditioned vault, wearing the requisite green polo shirt of most Lake Compounce employees. It's hard to describe being an Ellis & Associates lifeguard at Lake Compounce - you don't know unless you are/were one.
A few years back, there was a drowning at the lake. The guards who were on duty that night were my trainers and co-workers during my first summer. One of the best guards I know was the one who eventually found the victim that night. You never saw his name in the paper, or his face on TV. He didn't work at a state park, and he didn't have one of those heroic-looking rescues that everybody talks about and admires, and thinks of when they think of lifeguards saving people. He was just a kid who took his job damn seriously, a kid who walked around in the kiddie pool carrying a rescue tube, a kid who watched hundreds of people come down the Lights-Out chute, a kid who watched like a hawk everything that went on in his area of responsibility. We scanned the bottoms of 3-foot pools, we walked around the buoys in the relax pools, we kept our whistles in our mouths and gloves in our packs, we knew the Jimmy-Jimmy drill in our sleep. We wore dorky orange t-shirts and blue trunks, always had sunglasses, always had a cup or bottle of water nearby, always got rotated late, always were too hot or too cold. For seven dollars an hour we stood, scanned, whistled, yelled, watched. If you did it right, if you took it as seriously as I did, you were damn scared every time you took your spot. You thought about what you would do if that little kid went under, if that older man had a heart attack, if somebody choked. You were always a little terrified.
Tonight I drove home with a sinking feeling in my gut, the feeling that something had happened at last. You'd think that since I'm not a part of it anymore, it wouldn't matter. But it didn't work that way. For a while I thought that whatever happened had happened in the waterpark, and that that was it. The thing that you try to prepare for and that you train for.....something really bad. It shook me up pretty badly.
I'm not there anymore partly because of the fear - the fear that something would happen under my watch, and that what happened after that would be my responsibility. Seven dollars and forty-five cents an hour is not a big enough incentive to be the one responsible for all those peoples' safety. It's a relief in a way, but a small part of me thinks I'm missing out.
Isn't it ironic that I'm paid more now for handling money, than I ever was for handling people's safety?
posted by Laura at 10:38:00 PM
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