It only takes seventeen minutes to realize that lifeguarding was not the career for me. Seventeen minutes.
It isn’t the 5:15 AM alarm that did it. Or the gross vacuum I have to hook and drag out of the pool. Or the smell that clings to my hands after checking the chemicals. No, it’s the fact that at 6:17 AM, Ms. Tucker, my old social studies teacher, waltzes in and starts stripping.
I don’t recognize her at first. However, her bright pink bathrobe and the pink pool noodle she carries soon attract my attention. A brilliant beacon that, once it has served its purpose and captures my gaze, is promptly peeled off so she could enter the water.
I loathe the woman. It seems harsh, but it’s true. The grouchy, old lady was my social studies teacher all through 7th and 8th grade. I don’t remember much of the history we learned in her class—I think we had an Egyptian mythology unit at one point and an American Civil War Unit during one of the springs—but I vividly recall that the enmity was mutual, and that she started it.
Ms. Tucker hated teaching with a passion, a disgust only rivaled by that which she had for her students. Once, the class was working on a worksheet—and, admittedly, goofing off a bit, but we were in middle school—and she blew up. She ranted and yelled about how we were all “lazy,” “good for nothings” who would “never amount to anything in life” for ten minutes while her face reddened. A month later, Audrey, my best friend, said that she told her class that they were unbearably stupid and that “it’s no wonder the school’s standardized test scores are so low.” When we heard she retired last year, everyone who had endured her class struggled between rejoicing and feeling bitter that she hadn’t done it sooner.
“The dragon is gone!” Audrey crowed, raising her can of Pepsi in a toast.
“You mean the Umbridge wanna-be,” I replied.
She snorted hard enough for pop to come out her nose.
Despite my words then, I didn’t know just how true they were until this moment when the woman walked onto my pool deck dressed like a watered-down flamingo.
With her pool noodle and water-dumbbells, Ms. Tucker starts a vigorous water aerobics regime, heedless of my existential crisis.
I try to look away, to not spend the whole shift gaping in horror at the woman, but it’s impossible. As my eyes scan over the old man who spits with every breath of his breaststroke, the other retirees gossiping during their own aerobics, or the athlete flying through lap after lap, recognition causes my eyes to involuntarily catch into a double take every time I see her. Given that I must constantly scan the pool, this means every few seconds.
God, why couldn’t it have been Mr. Birkeland, who everyone had a crush on in 9th grade? Or Mrs. Morton? The physics teacher who always had a basket of Jolly Ranchers on her desk and would sometimes spend half the class just chatting?
After break, I rotate back on stand. Ms. Tucker is still going, doing sun-salutations, now, with the foam-dumbbells in the 3ft section.
I shudder and wallow. Then I daydream.
I don’t want her to drown, okay? That would be very bad, and I don’t want the woman to actually die. Plus, I really don’t want to have to give her mouth to mouth, even through a breathing mask. I don’t want her to drown.
But… I can’t help but notice the white, diabetic device stuck to her upper arm as she stretches. What if her blood sugar went just a little too high or a little too low, and I had to rescue her so she wouldn’t drown? I could give her something sweet or get her diabetes medication out of her locker, and she’d be fine. No resuscitation required. But I could also see the look on her face when one of those lazy students who would never amount to anything saved her life.
Who am I kidding? She probably wouldn’t even say thank you because making sure people don’t drown is my actual job description. Saving her would be the bare minimum. I wonder if she would even recognize me.
Still, it’s nice to dream.
Eventually, she gets out. All hopes of never seeing her again are dashed when the crowd of other retirees give their farewells and use her name. Great, she’s a regular.
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. She’s not “the dragon” anymore. She’s just an old lady who likes to swim. And I’m not her student. We’re near strangers now, tethered together only by my own unpleasant memories. I can’t quit over this. Not just because I need this job, either. But because then she would win. Maybe even be right about my potential—or lack of it.
Two hours later, I clock out and give a nod to the front desk lady, Hannah, on my way out when she stops me, “Just a heads up, we got a complaint this morning from one of the members.”
“What was it?” I ask. “Water too cold? Band-Aid on the ground?”
“No, some woman said the lifeguards were sleeping on duty.”
“What? We weren’t. I mean, I can’t say for sure about Aaron, but he was chugging an energy drink, and I sure wasn’t asleep.” With dawning suspicion, I ask, “Who complained?”
Hannah didn’t know her name but scrolled through the list of check-ins until she found her picture: Ms. Tucker.
I sigh, “Figures.”
I walk out, mentally composing an email assuring my boss that I was not, in fact, asleep on duty and planning how to update my resume.
Lily Hunger is a Northeast Ohio writer. When not braving the ever-shifting elements of Midwestern weather or working at a local university, she procrastinates writing. Some tenacious ideas have managed to make it through to the page, however, resulting in some of her recent stories and poems to appear in Corvid Queen, Reunion: The Dallas Review and Jenny Magazine.
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