On the Spot

The motto I continuously follow comes from the lesson I learned last year:

Over the summer I was a lifeguard at my local pool. One hot summer day, my co-worker Grant asked me to cover his early morning shift. My normal shifts started in the afternoon while there were mainly young children at the pool. However, the early mornings were designated for elderlies. 

That morning while I was working I noticed an elderly woman approaching the pool, taking little steps and walking with a cane; she looked crippled. I was very skeptical, since I was used to seeing little kids screaming and running around the pool during my normal mid-day shifts. 

While I was scanning over the lap lane section, I saw the elderly woman again, however her face was in the water and her body looked frozen. She kept repeating the movement of trying to reach for something, I wasn’t sure if it was for her hat or the wall. After moving closer towards her, I realized that in fact she was drowning. Instantly I blew my whistle and jumped in the water to save her. 

Once I had successfully gotten her out onto the pool deck, I had to make sure she was breathing. I realized her breathing was normal, concluding that I didn’t need to perform CPR. However, her face had splashes of purple and she was coughing up water. We ended up calling the ambulance and they asked me a series of questions before leaving. 

Later that day my boss approached me with a phone. He handed the phone to me, and the elderly woman thanked me for saving her life and called me a hero. This was very shocking to hear, I knew I saved her life but no one had ever called me a hero. In the evening as I was leaving the pool to go home, my boss thanked me again for saving the woman. He said that if Grant was working the shift, he wouldn’t have realized she was drowning, and he wouldn’t have known what to do.

Taking away from this experience, it has taught me that everything in life happens for a reason. I truly believe that something in the universe sent me a message telling me to cover Grant’s shift that day. If I didn’t cover his shift, the elderly woman would’ve most likely been dead. We are thrown with many ordeals in life which shape our future, however they happen for a specific reason. Since everything happens for a reason, what is meant to happen will, but we can still take different paths in life. Our life doesn’t define us, we define it.