The Martlet

The first time I saved someone’s life, it was a quiet Tuesday evening at the swimming pool. I sat in my lifeguard chair and watched, bored, as about 20 people swam laps. I’d been on deck for 40 minutes.

One lady who had been plowing through the water confidently lifted her head up suddenly. Slowing down, her legs sunk as she cocked her head to one side. It looked like she was thinking really hard or listening for something she couldn’t quite hear. Eventually, she came to a complete stop in the middle of the lane and treaded water in place.

A panicked expression washed over her face and she screamed. Confused, I watched as she sunk under the water and thrashed desperately, reaching for the lane rope.

She was drowning.

I swung from my chair by one arm, kicked off my skateboard shoes and hit the water in seconds. I dove under the swimmers and lane ropes and swam the 10 feet to her side. I wrapped my arm around her waist and heaved her along with me.

After I pulled her out of the pool, she laid on the deck clutching her leg.

“What happened?” I asked.

She blurted out an agonized answer in Cantonese.

“A leg cramp,” someone translated for me.

The woman, still dripping, looked me in the face with naked gratitude.

“Thank you,” she said.

A second home

I grew up at the pool. For me, the musky brine of chlorine instantly conjures up images of rattling diving boards, frothing hot tubs and hours spent swimming laps. For years, as a competitive swimmer, I was in the pool every day.

It was an obvious choice, becoming a lifeguard. It took me over a year and a half to get certified but I knew it paid well and it seemed like an awesome job. I’d been rescued more than once by lifeguards myself, and they had become like family. They gave me Band-Aids and chatted with me on deck. Most days they would chase me out of the hot tub because I was too young.

Those were the days of Baywatch, when just saying the word “lifeguard” instantly made people think of tight red bathing suits, slow-motion running and unreasonably attractive people. It was a glamorous, exciting job — and it sure beat the hell out of working at the gas station.

For the last eight years, I’ve worked for six different cities as a lifeguard and swimming instructor. I’ve stood on wobbling docks at summer camp watching water skiers whip around in the afternoon sun while kids bounce on aqua-trampolines. I’ve guarded from the gorgeous beaches of Vancouver, watching as children play in the surf and distance swimmers do laps around the buoys. In Richmond, I worked at a variety of water parks and gained my first experience with wave pools and water slides. I’ve also worked at tiny pools, with little more than a glorified hole in the ground for a pool.

You name it, I’ve probably guarded it.

Everyday heroism

Like police officers or nurses or firefighters, lifeguards regularly hold people’s lives in their hands. Though the majority of our job is spent wandering around the deck or scanning the pool from our guard chair, we always have to be ready to deal with an emergency.

It gets to the point where saving someone’s life is such an average, everyday occurrence, that you hardly think about it.

At one pool I worked at, we sometimes wracked up a tally of 10 DNS’s (drowning non-swimmers) in a single shift. Whether it was a small kid being overwhelmed by the current at the bottom of the slide or someone accidentally slipping past the drop-off in the deep end, we were on constant alert.

Sometimes a full-grown adult will start drowning in four feet of water if she or he becomes disoriented and can’t figure out which way is up. I’ve seen floating mats with several children on them flip in deep water, and have watched in horror as multiple kids began to drown right in front of me.

One time, I jumped into a thrashing wave pool with a friend of mine to save two teenage girls who were drowning each other. They pawed at each other’s faces and shoulders, pushing one another under the water as waves crashed over their heads.

As I carried one of them towards the shallow end on my hip, they continued to fight and bicker. My fellow lifeguard, who was carrying the second girl, shook his head at me, annoyed. The girls nodded at us and ran away without even saying “thank you.”

Then, there are the people who get embarrassed. They’re convinced they’re good swimmers, but then they find themselves swallowing water and doing frantic double backstrokes as they sink beneath the water right in front of their children. They’ll apologize endlessly and head back to the shallow end, their face blushing deep purple.

No matter what state you’re in — tired, distracted, sick — this might be the shift where a major incident happens.

One day, a friend of mine showed up to his shift hung over. He had hosted a keg party the night before and had pulled an all-nighter. When he relieved me from my position in the deep end, his skin was sallow and clammy. His eyes had deep circles around them and were bloodshot.

“You okay to guard?” I asked.

He shrugged me off. I headed back to the guardroom and was about 100 feet away when I heard his whistle. As I sprinted back across the deck I saw him take a running dive into the water. A woman was churning the water desperately, gasping for air and reaching for help.

As my friend approached, the woman swirled around in the pool and clocked him full-force in the mouth with her elbow.

As we helped her out of the pool, my buddy dragged himself away. She had chipped off half of his front tooth and there was a tiny snaking line of blood running out of his mouth and down his neck.

“I fucking hate this job,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Different environments

Every aquatic facility is different. You might guard one pool for six years, only to start somewhere else and find yourself back at square one.

There are the cushy jobs, getting paid $25-an-hour to watch professional athletes swim laps. Or maybe you get the exact same, well-behaved elderly patrons everyday. You can find jobs where you spend most of your day chatting with regulars and supervising water aerobics.

Then there are the high-risk environments. This is where you’ll find the adrenaline junkie lifeguards — the ones who memorize every word of the manual and love to compete in lifeguard competitions. They’re always practicing their eggbeater or CPR. They bring their own fanny packs with state-of-the-art equipment and they’re in perfect shape.

I’ve supervised a pool with several hundred patrons, and I’ve yawned my way through shifts with less than 10 people in the pool. The key to being a good lifeguard is always being on your toes, no matter what the situation.

During one day at a water park facility, I dealt with the following incidents: a guy who mashed his head against the wall after forgetting to let go on the rope swing, two DNS’s in different parts of the pool and a girl who split open her leg when she fell on deck. (This was all on top of hosing the change room, monitoring the pool chemistry and dealing with a broken hot tub.)

As a lifeguard, you get very good at multi-tasking. However, it’s the boring shifts — the ones where nothing happens — that you have to watch out for most.

One night, while the pool was nearly deserted, I saw a man slump down beside the hot tub. When I got there his breathing was shallow and pained. His eyes were closed, his hand to his chest.

I called for back up and an ambulance and, along with my co-worker, we ensured the guy was okay. He eventually sat up, drank some water and we realized he was suffering from heat exhaustion — not a heart attack, like we feared.

When he regained his strength, he grabbed the front of my shirt and looked me in the eyes.

“Pooh-pah ain-jah,” he said to me in a thick Chinese accent. I asked him to repeat himself.

“Purple angel,” he said, referring to my purple shirt. “You are my purple angel.”

People watching

There is something about swimming pools that brings out the most bizarre and horrifying behavior in people.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen it all, from the elderly woman who likes to hump the jets while ogling the male lifeguards to the man who routinely wanders out on deck naked, simply because he forgot to put on his bathing suit.

There’re people who gargle chlorine water or hack and spit in the gutters. I saw one young boy, during a swimming lesson, just whip it out and pee into the pool. His horrified instructor didn’t have time to stop him.

I’ve seen handfuls of human shit smeared across mirrors. I’ve seen people get into shoving matches over pool noodles. I’ve talked to couples having sex in the kiddie pool, who have to be reminded that it’s inappropriate to have intercourse in public.

Some of this stuff you shrug off, some you don’t.We caught a pervert trying to sneak into the woman’s change room once. When he tried to flee the building, a buddy of mine kicked off his flip flops and chased him nearly a kilometer down the street. When he finally caught him, he threw the guy to the ground and sat on him until the police showed up.

Occupational hazards

I often joke that boredom is the primary occupational hazard of lifeguarding. Seven hours of watching a half-empty pool lazily drain into the gutters will slowly chip away at anyone’s sanity.

For the most part, lifeguard injuries are pretty silly. One dude I knew was out for a year on workers compensation after he tripped on an aerobics dumbbell and wrenched his back. Another friend sprained her wrist while showering after swimming lessons.

But every now and then, the threat of death is very real. There was one teenage girl, newly certified, who caught a DNS on her very first shift. A huge 250-pound man was drowning by the diving boards and calling for her help. She blew her whistle weakly and jumped in without waiting for back up. No one heard her in the shallow end.

When she swam over to the guy, he took her by the throat and throttled her. She was trapped underneath him as he strangled her and shoved her underwater.

Luckily, two patrons saw what was happening. They rescued the pair and got the attention of the other lifeguards, who arrived in time to find her choking up water and crying with her face against the deck.

She never worked another shift.

Majors and minors

In lifeguard language, there are two types of incidents: majors and minors. The minor incidents are things like scraped knees and nose bleeds. A major incident could be anything from a heart attack to a broken spine.

The majority of your first aid work is little more than glorified Band-Aid storage. Often, a patron will just walk up and ask for one, declining your help and not bothering to tell you what happened.

Other times, you need to calm down the six-year-old girl terrified at the sight of her own blood, or hold ice up to the back of a kids’ neck as he pinches his nose shut and tries to mop up the blood running down his face and chest.

Lifeguards can work their entire career without ever experiencing a major incident. I made it almost three years before I had even heard about one, when a friend of mine dragged a dead guy off the bottom of the pool during an early bird shift and brought him back to life with panicked CPR.

The guy choked up water and coughed, eventually making a full recovery in the hospital. When I saw my friend later that day, he shrugged it off like it was nothing.

“I just went into auto-pilot. It didn’t feel real,” he said.

The first major incident I dealt with in-person happened at a large aquatic facility with multiple pools.

I was supervising a team of lifeguards when a scuba diver’s equipment malfunctioned and he was unable to undo his weight belt. He had been practicing on the bottom of the pool for nearly half an hour, so the lifeguard nearby didn’t notice anything was wrong.

A young boy approached the lifeguard and told him he was concerned. When my friend looked into the water, he saw the lifeless body floating about 10 feet down.

Miraculously, he was somehow able to drag this guy out of the water along with all his equipment. I sent several other lifeguards running as back up, and my stomach tightened when I saw a purple shirt pumping up and down in the unmistakable CPR position.

The man was revived in hospital and returned to the pool the next day with flowers. My buddy was interviewed for the news. The family of the victim handed us candy and flowers and a giant card.

A worthwhile job

Lifeguarding can be overwhelmingly dull. Sometimes the routine of hosing out change rooms and tidying up toys can make you forget that you’re there to do an important and dangerous job.

The lifeguards I’ve known over the years are pretty ordinary people. A lot of them are students. They may have other career ambitions or are just looking for something to pay the bills. There are some lifers, the people who have been guarding the same pool for 30 years. There are the lifesaving enthusiasts, who just enjoy the position of power.

But overall, they’re an awesome crowd of people who are making a tangible difference in people lives. I’m proud to wear the uniform.