Lifeguard Training

I spent a lot of time being certified as a lifeguard and instructor, not that it reflected well in my pay, when compared with those who worked in construction or at a grocery store. Then again, the work was far lighter than those others, as well.

They’ve renamed all the levels since then, but I began with Novice, then Beginners, Intermediate, Junior, and Senior; yellow, orange, blue, green, and white badges, respectfully, with Walter Safety stitched into the first 2, and the Red Cross into the others. Progression was different then, lessons spanned the summer, with the lessons only taught during summer (no heat, no insulation at the venerable Schumacher pool), and with the skill sets taught at each level broader than now, I imagine. Most swim students stopped there. That was sensible. One need not progress any further if one’s goal was to just learn how to swim. After that the aspects of rescue, recovery, first aid and such were the main focus of the curriculum. Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion were the minimum requirements to be a lifeguard, where lifesaving skills were taught, ring tosses, swim pulls, defense against drowning victims, and then much later, spinal injury recovery and CPR. Then there was Instructor, and finally National Lifeguard. One also had to be at least 17 years old to be a lifeguard.

Were that all one had to do. We were always enrolled in refreshers, and had weekly charts of laps swum, to keep our stamina up, laps to be swum on our own time. That was also the reason why I was paid less than those in the other jobs; the city was apparently under no obligation to pay us minimum wage, since we’d not reached the true working age of 18…or so I gather. I’m not a lawyer; not then, not now.

Come summer, we’d train at the river. Gilles Lake was never considered, too easy, no current. So every summer there were training exercises at the Mattagami.

We’d, each in turn, drift down the river on the current, splashing about to keep in character. Then the rescuers would blow their whistles, and those not designated drowners or rescuers would exit the water. While one rescuer stayed on the beach, supervising the orderly exit of swimmers from the water, the other would run to his/her board, and race downriver to collect us. At other times, we’d have to perform the same rescue but without the board, and then tow the victim back to the beach, swimming each way, no easy task when done against the river current.

Once the rescue was complete, we’d have to perform mouth to mouth. I had to rescue Lisa Leone. Lisa was a friend of my sister’s, very pretty. I had the urge to kiss her lips...but that would have been unprofessional, and might have freaked her out, so I just performed mouth to mouth on her, instead, and promptly clacked teeth with her. It stung me. It really hurt her. So, I guess what slim chances I might have had with her died a quick death, right then.

I preformed my series of rescues with Lisa, and then I was designated the drowning victim. I let go of the buoy line, and began to drift. Lisa swam after me, and after declaring me not a danger, she closed the distance between us and took hold of me, spun me on my back, and began to tow me back to shore. So far, so good. But she wasn’t a strong swimmer against current. I glanced to the side and noted that we’d made absolutely no progress back to shore. I waited, checked again, and found we were still in the same relative position. I began to kick to help out; but she was tiring, and we were soon losing ground. All this time, she was working hard, keeping warm; I on the other hand, was just supposed to lay there and enjoy the ride. I wasn’t. The constant flow of water was carrying my body heat away. I finally told her it was no good, that I was beginning to freeze, so I pulled away, and began to swim to shore. And realized how cold and stiff I’d actually become. My limbs were really slow to respond. I struggled and after a time, I made it to shore, far behind Lisa, and once on shore, began to shiver. I took a few steps, then found I couldn’t make any more progress up the sandy beach. My limbs ached, my breath was shallow and short. The shivering grew, and my legs buckled beneath me. Before I knew it, I was buried in life guards, each more than happy to finally put all those finely-honed skills to use. Blankets were wrapped around me, limbs briskly massaged. Sensation began to return to my legs and arms. And pain. There was quite a bit of aching for the next little while.

I was actually suffering from hyperthermia. I turned blue and shivered for about an hour. I could barely talk for the first ten minutes of that hour, then only with great effort for twenty minutes after that.

There was more training to be had than just rescues. Some of even more difficult, or so it seemed. CPR was difficult. We had to perform on a dummy that spit out a printed tape of our compressions, of our mouth-to-mouth breathing, volume and timing. Too little, and the dummy died of heart failure or suffer brain damage; too hard, and we’d hear a squeal, informing us that we’d broken ribs and punctured a lung. First came the instruction, then the written test (that was easy enough), and then came the, for me anyway, endless attempts at keeping the dummy alive. A few, and I mean a very few, were lucky enough to pass the “clinical” in their first attempts, but for the bulk of us, our stress levels rose with repeated failures. Garry Martin began to make a mockery of the process after the first hour, and began calling the dummy Linda Sue. “What’s that, Linda Sue,” he’d say, shaking the shit out of the dummy. “You can’t breathe? Your heart can’t beat?” Then he’d wallop her, sometimes to see how high he could get the needle to jump, just to see if he could make that circus bell ring.

It took a long time. I was not the last to complete the test, but I was not far from it. I had to take a break, I had to go off by myself for about fifteen minutes, just to get my anger, and impending depression under control. I felt like crying. I did. Then I choked it back. And then I made another attempt, and was shocked that I was a hair within the prescribed parameters of the test. I felt weak with relief.

At the end of the training, our instructor told us that if we did break a rib while saving a person, that person could sue us for damages, and that we were under no obligation to actually help anyone, ever. When I heard that, I seriously considered performing the initial shock punch we’d just been taught to the instructor’s chest.