Late Night Lifeguard

The other day I was pacing the floor in the women’s locker room at my local YMCA and complaining about the tardiness of the pool lifeguard.  Once again the other swimmers and I were waiting and waiting for the lifeguard to arrive and open the door.  What is the matter with him? I thought.  Doesn’t he know what time it is? Doesn’t he know I only have 25 minutes to swim on a good day? Doesn’t he know what time I have to be in Pittsfield and that my students will be waiting at the door for my sorry late self?  Doesn’t the world revolve around me?

The lifeguard did come shuffling in at about 6:10, bleary eyes gazing aimlessly through Weezer-type glasses, disheveled hair and a huge cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. He definitely had that “been up all night” look. He promptly sat down, took out his I-phone and started fooling around with it, rarely looking up at the swimmers.  Someone could have drown, had a heart attack, been swallowed by Jaws or gone swimming in the nude without him noticing.

His late arrival sent me on a mission to squeeze a 25-minute power swim into a 15-minute lap swimming frenzy that would scare even the likes of Dairy Torres.  Swimming off my rage while trying to recite in my head all of my positive affirmations that are meant to calm me down, I started wondering what the guards’ night might have been like to put him in this state of tardiness and ambivalence.  Perhaps he had been up all night writing a paper, solving the riddles of a computer program, doing advanced trigonometry, partying or all of the above.

I was a student myself once and I am very familiar with the all-nighter hell that sometimes swallows up an unsuspecting college student the way acne suddenly shows up on ones face.  They are awful.  I stayed up all night doing an arrangement for my guitar ensemble class once.  It’s not that I was a procrastinator or anything like that.  I wasn’t partying and hanging out with guys all night. I really don’t know what happened.  All of a sudden the arrangement was due the next day.

Well, I stayed up all night and finished it.  My big mistake?  The piece was in they key Bb really. Instead of putting the two necessary flats in the key signature like a normal arranger would do, I wrote them into every measure.  The Bland Man, (the pet name we gave for our guitar teacher at Miami,) really gave it to me for that one.  I felt stupid.  Okay so I’m not perfect.  I can’t say that my mistake on that piece has altered my life in any negative way.  The key signature police never arrested me or anything.  I did spend that whole day in this spaced out, half nauseated coma, wondering how in the world I would stay awake for my music history class with the professor who talked in a monotone voice and repeated the phrase “for all practical purposes,” in just about every sentence.  My grade in that class did not turn out well either.

Well at least I am learning to have compassion for others and that is important in this life.  I was able to put myself in this lifeguards imaginary shoes and to thus be truly grateful for what I have.  I hope he got some sleep.  I hope he finds a job he likes that pays him something.  I had a short swim that day, but I am still living and breathing.  I’m glad to not have to trade places with him. I hope my days of staying up all night to do guitar ensemble arrangements are over.  I was in a good mood when I left the pool that day.  I felt like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters when he was talking to Sigourney Weaver and told her he did his workout video on fast-forward and cut it down to 20 minutes.  What a time saver.  Thank you God for the small pleasures in life.