Stories from the Edge of the Water: Comradery

In response to my last Stories from the Edge of the Water, MacGhille_Mhoail pointed out that using "Army calls when not discussing something military...particularly when you're posting about Memorial Day" might be misconstrued as bad taste. And he's absolutely right; hopefully, no one took offense to my shout-out to my former lifeguards, especially since explaining my usage segues nicely into this post about comradery amongst lifeguards.

The biggest difficulty in my first lifeguarding class as an instructor was beginning at 8am, especially once the class got started and my students were exhausted from the previous day's swimming. I'd ask a question or give my students a task, and I'd get mumbled half responses. I think I made a half-joking remark that they should all holler "Hooah" like in the military. One student, who was somehow (I forget exactly) involved with the military, actually started yelling "Hooah" whenever I'd say anything. After a day or so, it caught on, and I had a class saying "Hooah" whenever I asked them to get changed for the pool or to swim a 500. That was an amazing class, and since I was the assistant pool manager, I ended up hiring some of them for that summer. Before long, half my staff of lifeguards were "Hooah"ing whenever I or one of the head guards would ask them to do something.

No, we weren't military (though some were or are now active), but we rallied around a common goal, a common purpose. That was the first summer I trained and took a team of guards to a competition. It required several hours of swim and training time in addition to our regular schedules. Between guarding, teaching swim lessons, and training, I was at the pool from 10am to 10pm most days, and I wasn't alone. They didn't complain about sacrificing their summer free time, they didn't quit because they were tired from being in the sun all day. They just kept at it because we kept at it together.

By far, that's one of the two things I miss most about my career as a lifeguard. I miss my team. I miss working with a group people all working together for a common goal: keeping people safe. And any good team of guards is the same. I was reminded of that in the last two weeks. I still guard on-call, and I retook the class to keep my certification current. The instructor was great. He was tough, fair, and really pushed the class, which was mostly made up of rookies. And yet, in two weeks, a group of kids I never worked with before and may never work with again, became a team. It still amazes me that, though no, it's not the military, lifeguarding can still bring a group so strongly together.