Jacob Barker
English 101 Hybrid Class
Essay #1
2/13/13
In my house when I was a kid the notion of saving a life was never that big of a deal. Having a seasoned life saver in the house takes some of the excitement out of the whole idea. It becomes something that just happens now and then, or even something you just do now and then. “Saved some lives yesterday,” my dad would proclaim as he reached the top of the stairs after a seventy two hour shift at station five. His clothes would stink of smoke and his hands would be black with soot and charcoal. My father worked for the Oxnard Fire Department for twenty seven years, thirteen as a captain. He would never give any details about what had taken place, that was up to the family to figure out. The following week a search in all the local papers would ensue. My mom would save every article mentioning my fathers name and tape them to the refrigerator door, except the ones in which there were stories of lives lost. Is it the fault of the rescuer when a victim does not make it? If the rescuer was never there the victim would die anyway. The dark side of lifesaving is when it goes wrong. When the person the rescuer has trained so hard to save does not survive whose fault is it? Does the rescuer take blame? These are questions my dad could never really wrap his head around and it is something I am sure still bothers him today. As a child the notion of life saving going wrong was not as familiar as the heroic picture painted in the news articles posted on our families refrigerator door. It is not something I really had any understanding of until my first lone rescue as an Ocean Lifeguard.
My parents started enrolling me in the Port Hueneme Junior Lifeguard program at the early age of eight years old and I loved it so much I returned every summer until I was sixteen. The program pretty much consists of a group of three hundred kids ages eight to sixteen wearing black board shorts, running around in the sand, and being yelled at by adult lifeguard instructors. We would swim the Hueneme pier, surf, and practice lifesaving techniques. Not the most relaxing summer vacations but I learned a lot and it was a great way to stay in shape and be active. From time to time if we were lucky, we would witness an actual rescue. Even at the young age of eight my rag tag crew of junior lifeguards and I could recognize when a swimmer was in distress and we would watch attentively as one of our instructors would sprint from giving us a lecture on proper sun protection to save a helpless beach patron. One second they were holding a bottle of spf seventy five and the next they were running down the beach toward the water with all their might, eyes forever locked on the victim. You could barely tell the water temperature was an icy fifty degrees from the way these guys would enter the surf. Never gingerly or hesitant, almost like they could not even feel the ocean, like the excitement of the rescue had numbed their skin to the cold. Some rescues were more serious than others, there were injuries and close calls but thankfully no one ever died. At that young age I already knew I was going to work as an ocean lifeguard for Port Hueneme. My dad and uncle both worked as lifeguards before me, it was in my blood, and I loved the adrenaline rush I got while watching our instructors preform rescues. It was as if I was watching an extreme sport like cliff diving or a daredevil performing a dangerous stunt. It was something I wanted desperately to do my self. Little did I know at the time, I would preform many rescues in my first year alone as a professional Ocean Lifeguard and they were all just as exciting as I always thought they would be.
It was the summer of two thousand and seven. Some time in July, after the fourth because there were still burned husks of cheap fireworks strewn across Hueneme beach. The weather was hot and sunny, not uncommon for anywhere else in California but Port Hueneme. I had lived in Oxnard my whole life and was still baffled by the weather cycle. One summer we would have record heat and sun and the next fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. No matter what the weather was like the red short wearing, buoy bearing, Ocean Lifeguards of Port Hueneme always stood vigilant in their blue castles of fiberglass and metal (lifeguard towers), and I was very proud to call myself one. It was my first summer as a professional ocean guard, still extremely green the more experienced lifeguards would say. We were short handed that year, only eight rookies including myself, and four lifers as we labeled them. Lifers were guys in their late thirties to eighties who had always been guards. Straight out of high school, all the way through college, some married with kids and some divorced and remarried, most with full time careers, having never missed a summer of life guarding in their lives. It was a way of life for these guys. You might think, “it’s just life guarding,” but not to these guards. Saving lives had become a sport, a contest, even a life mission. Thousands of X’s in permanent marker filled their blue and green Duck Feet like a soldier marking his gun proclaiming a victory count to all and themselves. The lifers were forever watching the whole beach with high power binoculars from pier, the main life guard tower. Pier was located atop what else but, the Hueneme pier with an eagle eye view of all the the unknowing beach patrons down below. We had three towers strewn across the sand, this particular day I was seated in H1, the tower furthest south. It was the biggest and newest tower having just arrived from some factory in Long Beach with a fresh coat of bright blue paint and brand new shinny chrome handrails.
The lifers could spot out every rip current from the pier tower. All the way to Rockside, the jetty furthest north, down to the old Halico metal plant on J street which was pretty far south. Not only were the lifers watching rip currents and unknowing beach patrons but they were watching us, the rookies, waiting for any chance to scrutinize and ridicule. We communicated with heavy long range radios, in code of course. “Pier, H1, 9-06 one 10-77 j-street, tower empty,” that meant you we’re in H1 and there was one boogie boarder who needed a rescue south of H1 and your tower would be empty after you left to rescue the victim. The lifers had pounded these codes into our heads, I could recite them front ways and backwards and probably murmured them in my sleep. It was that way with every aspect of life guarding from proper water entry techniques to the physics behind a rip current. One of the older lifers, a leather skinned and salty man in his late fifties, had scolded us rookies earlier that morning during a mock rescue exercise, “Any of these skills not committed to muscle memory will be totally forgotten during a rescue situation so stop screwing around god damn it! I wont be responsible for one of you rooks killing someone, or yourselves.” I could not imagine simply forgetting everything we had learned and did not take him very seriously, my mistake.
The smell of cheap off brand sunscreen and my own stale body odor hung heavy in the small box that was H1. Every few minutes a loud, “Smack,” would ring out as I slapped my fly swatter against the plastic windows and fiberglass walls of my tower. There were tons of beach flies due to a tidal pond formed earlier that year. We affectionally labeled it polio pond because it was thick with microorganisms and gave off the very pungent stench of old dead seal. I was reaching the end of an excruciatingly boring and uneventful nine hour shift and the effects of, “tower torture,” were taking their wicked hold on my bored and restless mind.
“Do not check the clock, do not check the clock,” I repeated in my head over and over but to no avail, only two minutes had passed since my last glance. It was five forty three and time was lagging hard. The sun sat two and a half fingers over Santa Cruz Island glaring at me while it’s rays licked my already tender skin. Laughing out loud I turned off my crumby flip phone; which was my only true means of knowing what time it was, and threw it in my open backpack. It was still warm and there were plenty of beach patrons in the water. Calm west winds and a fairly strong northwest swell had produced weak chest high waves for everyone to flop around in. It is funny how the ocean makes the perfect equalizer. Once that first wave of cold and salty water smacks you in the chest you forget who you are. Tired old men, adventurous teenagers, and excited children melted together in a salty soup of happy people, all jumping over the wave at hand and readying themselves for the next.
Scanning the beach from south to north counting the bobbing heads I focused on my training to stay awake. I recognized a group consisting of three guys and two girls who had been swimming for hours. It was obvious they were drinking because of the empty forty bottles that littered the sand around their brightly colored beach towels and by how they decided to settle as far away from my tower as they could. They were the last group of patrons to the south, about a quarter mile down the beach. It is against the law to consume alcoholic beverages on Hueneme but we did not enforce it. I was not cop and had no intentions of being one. The girls in the group looked cold and were sticking pretty close to shore as the three males battled the waves about chest deep bashing their bodies against each swell like imaginary blockers in an endless football drive. They were having a blast, not in any real danger if they kept their feet on the ground, I thought to myself. Moving my eyes north I continued up the beach when something caught my peripheral vision directly to left of my tower; it was not a distressed swimmer or a developing rip current, much better and more important than that. A group of very attractive girls my age had conjugated not ten feet from my bright blue prison. Standing up in excitement my legs felt like they did after a long distance road trip and I realized I had barely moved in two hours. These girls were hot and what they were doing on Port Hueneme beach I had no idea but I was set on starting a conversation. “Dude, chicks think lifeguards are hot,” the teenage voice in my head encouraged as I went to grab my phone, just in case I was lucky enough to snag a number.
As I turned left, to the south, my heart dropped from my chest, past my stomach, out the bottom of my red board shorts, and through the floor of my tower. It made a loud, “thud," as it landed in the warm sand below. “Shit!” I yelled as I rubbed my tired sun beaten eyes. A huge flash rip current had formed directly outside where the five drunkards were swimming. Two girls and three guys I remembered as I did a quick head count. Out loud, a frantic roll call ensued, “One, two,” the females were safe on the beach but they were pointing towards the water and jumping up and down, not a good sign. “Three, four,” there were two of the males, but where was the third? Splashing frantically forty yards from shore I spotted the fifth member of the bunch. He was drowning, climbing an invisible ladder slapping both hands against the surface one after the other. This guy had past of the point of distressed swimmer and was going to die if I did not do anything quick. I grabbed my sturdy long range radio, dropped it, picked it up clumsily like it was covered in a slippery coat of crud oil, and pressed the button to call pier tower.
At that moment my mind went totally blank, “What was the code,” I asked myself. All I could think about was the salty old lifer scolding me earlier that morning. In all the panic I had forgotten all my training just like he had told me I would. I took my finger off the radio’s button and time seemed to stop. Taking a long breath I dug deep into my brain and pressed the button once more. “Pier, H1, 9-06 one swimmer, J street, empty tower,” I screamed frantically. Not waiting for a response I flew over my tower’s shiny new chrome hand rail, grabbed my buoy and fins, and sprinted with all my life eyes fixed on the victim. My toes dug deep in the soft sand as I sprinted. What was a quarter mile now looked like a half marathon but it did not matter, I was numb. Out of the corner of my eye I could see beach patrons pointing at me realizing something was wrong and nervously searching the beach for their own loved ones making sure it was not their children I was rescuing. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Everything seemed slow and turned a cold shade of grey. I was going into shock and had not even hit the ocean yet. Finally I reached the best point of entry and hit the water. It was quiet, I knew I was wet but could not feel it. Keeping visual contact with the victim I kicked and swung my arms as fast they move. A huge wave engulfed my body pushing me down towards the bottom. At that point the victim was only a few yards away. As I broke the surface my eyes finally met with the his. He had the look of death on him, that is the only way I can explain it.
At that moment I realized thats what I was meant to do, save lives. If I was not there that man would have died and he knew it. From that point forward I have dedicated myself to becoming a professional life saver like my father before me. To this day I have never lost a victim but I fear the rescue when I finally do and the questions that tortured my dad torture me too. I realize now that it is not the fault of the rescuer when life saving goes wrong but a cruel twist of fate.
