Cecilia Lee

I did not want to be a lifeguard this summer. 

In fact, I tried very hard to make sure it wouldn’t happen: I applied for internships, asked about jobs around town, looked into summer programs. But, between my family’s summer calendar and some applications that fell through, it became apparent that if I wanted to make money (which I did), it was going to be lifeguarding.

I have tried to enjoy my lifeguard fate the past two summers, but the role and I hadn’t clicked in the past. The work environment is good; it is a community center where I’d practically grown up: I attended after-school programs, day camp and frequented the very pool I now guarded. And the pay was decent: minimum wage.

I was an anxious lifeguard, too. I knew to yell at kids when they were running on the pool deck or climbing all over each other, but was it okay if they were touching the rope between the shallow and deep ends? At what point did I tell them to stop sitting on the stairs? Where did I draw the lines in my lifeguarding? I could never just sit back and relax, like in the movies.

So, when it became apparent that part of my summer would be spent on the pool deck, I was not enthused.  But I decided to make the best of it.

You are in control, I told myself before my first shift of the summer. You know how to keep those kids safe. And it honestly made a difference.

The first couple of days took some adjusting. But, as I rediscovered my yelling voice and my ability to interact with small children, things started to turn the corner. Maybe, dare I say, lifeguarding wasn’t as bad as I remembered. When the kids did something I didn’t approve of, I told them. If they repeated it, I whistled or gave them a strike. It had seemed so hard, so stressful in previous years. It was okay now. I was in control.

The more control I felt, the more fun the job was. Campers came up to me during free swim: Can I show you a handstand? Watch my handstand. See, I can do a backflip. Look, look, look. 

I’m watching, I’m watching, I had told them smiling, as I glanced away (I had other swimmers to keep an eye on). But their energy was infectious. Wow, that’s awesome! I said. Can you do two flips in a row? Can you do a cartwheel underwater? (Few of them could—I don’t know if I can, either.)

I got closer to a couple of the kids, too, who I taught at my synagogue’s Hebrew school during the year. They told me about their days and summers and did (even more!) tricks in front of my chair. They smiled when they saw me, and I hope they realized I was just as excited to see them.

Instead of a cutthroat wilderness, the pool transformed into controlled chaos. I could talk to a couple of the kids and also whistle at that group of boys whose game of non-touch tag had turned physical. When I whistled, the general roar of the kids quieted, and I thought, I did that. I was in control, I was comfortable, I was happy. Lifeguarding was fun.

Even though it wasn’t what I was initially looking to do, lifeguarding became a valuable part of my summer. Self-assurance and confidence was just what I needed in my last few months at home, before I ventured off to New Haven, an unknown territory. I would be able to take the lessons I learned and apply them to my collegiate life — a setting with fewer unmanageable children and considerably lower risks of drowning. 

How hard could it be?