We humans enjoy putting people into boxes. Tie the bow nice and tidy, and we won't have to have our world-view questioned. We'll never feel uncomfortable! Pride is so familiar and warm, like a wood fire in a Maine winter.
I rarely actually have to use my lifeguard certification. Sure, we retrain often and we always know that we might have to go in at any second, but a good lifeguard's job lies mostly in prevention, and the people that frequent indoor pools often know how to swim. There's less glory than they tell you in the movies.
So when I kicked off my shoes and jumped in last week, I can assure you it surprised me as much as it did him.
You see, there's a group that comes to my pool every week. I have them all in a comfortable box. They are from a college nearby and they tend to be oblivious to the fact that I just mopped that floor, or that I don't really want to watch them make out for the half hour that I must guard them, and their conduct can be (at times) disorderly at best. That was all there was to them.
Until one of them started struggling and then slipped under the water. And suddenly I was right above him, using my weight as a counterbalance to pull him up and onto my rescue tube (this is why we retrain, I thought to myself). He had only been under for a moment, so he only coughed a little, then looked at me with surprise in his wide eyes and exclaimed,
"I can't swim!"
I almost laughed right then and there. But instead, realizing that such behavior might be inappropriate under the circumstances, I simply asked him if he was alright, and whether he needed help getting to the shallow end or if he could get out at the wall where I had brought him to.
He said he could get out and so he did. Then I did the half hour of paperwork due every time a lifeguard has to jump in (another thing they don't tell you in the movies), then I changed out of my sopping wet clothes, and went home.
No thanks. No glory. That was all. But I don't do it for the thanks, so it doesn't really matter, right?
Right. And besides, he was only acting the way I knew he would - his box demanded it, after all.
Until he came back with his group tonight. He had been banished to the shallow end, perhaps been taken down a peg or two, poor guy, but he did come back and that I could certainly respect.
I saw him and made eye contact as I was about to go on deck and relieve the guard that was stationed out there. I saw him just in time to hold the door so that he could go through before me.
I gave him a small smile, wondering if he remembered me. And he looked straight back into my eyes and said, "Thank you." He held my gaze just long enough for me to wonder whether he was thanking me for the fact that I was holding the door for him, or for what I did for him the week before.
I suppose I'll never really know for sure, but I choose to believe the latter. My silly box isn't that important, after all.
So what did you think? I especially liked this piece, but thought it was maybe a little long? Does it keep the reader's attention?
ReplyDeleteIt depends. It depends on what you want it to be: is it a private meditation or is it an essay-vignette for an audience?
ReplyDeleteIf it's a meditation, you've begun with the general thought, then shown us the counter-example, then returned, wiser, to the original thought. That's a classic progression, nothing wrong with it at all.
But, if you want to attack the reader's attention, you need to start with you kicking off your shoes, you need to give as much internal and external detail to the rescue as possible (internal: your thoughts and feelings at the time; external: what exactly you and he did in the water), and then you can offer the larger thoughts about boxes.
Neither way is better. They serve different purposes. One gets your thoughts in order, hammers them out neatly and clearly. The other strikes hard with the hammer, making some sparks, and then does the fine work later.
I'm not really sure.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I have been thinking a lot about my BDN blog lately and how to mix it with enough of my soul and voice that it keeps me interested. If that makes sense.
So although I don't think the content of this post is right for that blog (although technically it was an adventure ;)) I think maybe those thoughts are what predicated my question.
And I agree with your thoughts, I think. It might be an interesting exercise to rewrite this article as if I was writing for the news though. Might provide insight to my questions?
Jumping into the water for a rescue sure sounds like an adventure to me. When I did Red Cross Lifesaving in the mid-1950s (in those days we did chest compression/arm pull method to bring the dead back to life--no breath of life, heart compression for us, no ma'am!), they always emphasized that being in the water with someone panicky was a pretty dangerous place to be.
ReplyDeleteI've gone into rotten ice ponds in the spring to rescue dogs who got a little too cocky, but presumably your customer at the pool was not wearing a collar you could grab while hauling him back to safety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e2W8tdgzy0
DeleteEnjoy.
Hahahaha!! How far medicine and life-saving has come from then! Was that a very useful method? I can't imagine.
ReplyDeleteI have some trepidation about putting something out there in the BDN that doesn't live up to my promise of sharing out-of-the-way places for my readers to discover... but lifesaving is pretty news-worthy and all that.
How often do you actually go in the pool for a rescue? Not that often, I'd imagine. It's an out of the way place to be, isn't it? You prepare for it but don't expect it. And certainly, the deep end was an out-of-the-way place to be for your nonswimmer!
ReplyDelete(Well, perhaps all this is stretching it a bit.)
Have you ever been in white water dealing with a capsized canoe and wet canoeists? Is that a way to lead in to the pool, a frame you can use to start your readers off in the shallow end?
We never had to actually resuscitate someone using that method, but we all did get our Red Cross Junior Life Saving Badges. I'm prepared!
Maybe an approach for the BDN is to be upfront about your trepidation and to use it as a rhetorical wedge.
DeleteOh, that is true. I'll rewrite it and post it on here soon, then maybe you can tell me what was improved and what was potentially lost in the transition.
ReplyDelete