Not very often, mind you, but just once in awhile, you get a chance to be the person that you want to be, or the person you could be, rather than the person you currently think yourself to be.
June 26, 6:00 AM, I wake to the sound of a blasting whistle, coming in groups of three. Within seconds, I'm fully alert and out of bed. Within another ten seconds my feet are shoved into my flip-flops and a hoodie is in my hands, along with my employee ID lanyard. While running faster than I've ever run in my life, I slip on the hoodie and hold onto the lanyard as if it's my life force. I sprint the distance that would seem short to any half-decent runner and make it to the stairs. I hate stairs--hate them--they trip me every damn time--but in this moment I don't think about how much I hate the stairs. I just run down the stairs. Yes, run. I never run down stairs. Right now, though, I'm not even looking where I'm going. I'm just moving.
I make it to the sand and see that some people, including my co-counselor, are already in the water. I sprint the last few yards--and then face-plant into the sand, less than two feet from my destination. Hil is laughing, reminding me that this is not, in fact, the real deal. This is just a drill. Ordinarily I would be feeling like an idiot right about now. This time, I just pop back to my feet, assuring Hil that I'm fine (really, compared to my usual klutz-a-thon, falling into the sand is quite pleasant), and throw my ID into the bucket. I kick off my shoes and run down the dock to the line of counselors and campers that has begun to form, led by a lifeguard.
There, I am faced with another problem: getting into the water. I never jump in. I walk, wade, or slide down a ladder. This time, I have to jump...so I do. I do know that this is just a drill, but as always, I treat it as if it's the real deal. I fall into waist-deep water (keep in mind, I'm 5'1) and link arms with my co-counselor. The rest of the line forms. There are maybe twenty of us. This is the rule: first 20 to the water form the line.
We alternate leg sweeps, imagining that we are looking for an unconscious swimmer floating on the bottom of the lake. Three years ago, the very concept of this was enough to turn my stomach. I'm not thinking about that now. I know we won't find anything, but the idea is to be ready for when we might find something, so I actually look and almost shout out when my foot hits a moss-covered rock. Again, I look back to the shoreline, where Hil is watching, but still smiling a little. I remind myself that this is just a drill and that one of my campers is not unconscious at the bottom of the lake, and continue.
We reach the dock and I think the lifeguard is going to tell us to turn around. Not even close. "Under the dock!" she orders us. Oh my God, duck under the water? Without goggles, so I can't keep my eyes open? With my severe lack of coordination, this has disaster written all over it. What if I come back up too early and hit my head on the dock? Then they'll be looking for me at the bottom of Green Lake. I tell myself that won't happen, shut my eyes, and dive under the dock. I overshoot and end up a little past my destination, but it's okay--that's what the "back up to the dock" command is for. We continue leg sweeps until the all-clear signal is given.
By that point, I am so exhausted that I don't know how I'm going to pull myself out of the water and onto the dock, but I do manage it through sheer force of will. This is when I remember, as if it happened ten years ago, that I felt sick when I woke up this morning, probably a combination of nerves at the thought of the drill and not drinking enough water the night before (this has happened before). So I jumped out of bed, ran across the HSG division, jumped into a lake, and dove under a dock, at six in the morning, while feeling sick. And it's only after the fact that I realize I felt sick in the first place.
All of this, and it was just a drill.
Last Saturday, a man passed out in the cafeteria, literally right in front of me (I'm not kidding, he was maybe two yards away, if that) and I completely froze up. No, for anyone who's wondering, I'm not professionally trained; not Red Cross certified or anything like that. But, thanks to a combination of growing up with a nurse for a mother, taking baby-sitting classes that included CPR training, and reading just about everything I could get my hands on, I do happen to know a fair bit about first-aid. So when I completely, totally forgot every single thing I ever knew about how to react in an emergency situation the very first time an emergency actually happened in front of me, you can imagine how utterly useless I felt after the fact.
All I could think was, what if that had been one of my girls? At the time I'd only met, I think, four of my girls, none of whom had any medical conditions that would cause them to collapse in the middle of a crowded cafeteria, but things happen. People get dehydrated, especially in ninety-degree heat, which we'd been blessed with that week. People fall off bunks, run into walls, get hit in the head with flying rec equipment, forget their medications...and as counselors we're expected to know, on some basic level, how to deal with it. So I couldn't stop asking myself, what if that happened to one of the girls in my cabin? What if someone fell off a bunk and got knocked out, and all I could do was stand there like a statue (which, for the record, is what happened in the cafeteria)?
Also, guess what? Emergencies require speed. I am not a speedy person by nature. The fastest I ever move is when I shoot up my hand to answer a question in class. I don't run. I dropped out of the cross-country skiing club in high school because I didn't want to practice cross-country running during the non-snowy months. I can't run for more than a few yards before my body decides, okay, time to stop this. Race-walking? I can do that. Biking? Meh, not my favorite, but I can do it. Put me on rollerblades or a scooter, and I'll whiz by like The Flash. But running? Forget it.
And yet when I just thought that something was wrong, even though my rational mind knew it was just a drill, I jumped into action. I didn't know I could move that. For a girl who spends maybe five minutes every month--if that--doing any kind of running, being the fourth or fifth person in the water is a pretty big deal. Normally if I do have to run, for any reason, even if it's just running to class, I'll whine about it and complain about being hot and sweaty and thirsty. Add in feeling sick to that equation, and forget it, I'd rather be late to class. But the minute I heard that whistle, I didn't think about anything other than, They need me at the waterfront. Someone is lost. Someone could be drowning. I'm not certified in CPR, I'm not a lifeguard, all I can do is help them find that person, so that's what I'm going to do.
When I got that letter telling me, "Congratulations, you made it! You're a counselor!" I was happy, but I was also scared. One of my greatest fears was the LSP. Every year at the arts camp, we have to do a LSP drill. Translation: Lost Swimmer Procedure. Basically, the lifeguards do buddy checks, and if anyone can't find their buddy, the LSP begins IMMEDIATELY. The LSP is what we did this morning: everyone, no matter where they are on campus, runs to the waterfront and makes a human chain in shallow water, then searches for the lost swimmer by doing leg sweeps. Usually, only the first twenty or thirty to make it to the water have to go in. As a searcher, your job is to keep your mouth shut and follow directions (two things I am generally not so great at doing).
When I was a camper here, I failed the LSP. Like, really failed. I was in cabin 16, a straight shot from the Sundecker, which is literally right next to the stairs leading down to the waterfront. I was one of the last people there. I never even made it to the waterfront--I just stood on the Sundecker with a handful of other stragglers. I didn't even run. I just kind of meandered to the deck, bleary-eyed and confused, having totally forgotten what to do in this situation. At the time it didn't matter much to me anyway; I'd accepted that the most terrifying thing I could deal with would be a sprained ankle (but since I had no plans to be a camp counselor, that didn't even really apply to me yet).
This year, I was determined for my girls to be the first cabin to the waterfront. I told them last night, "We ARE going to be there first." Initially there was some protest, but when I assured them they wouldn't have to go underwater and promised the coveted first showers to any girls who came into the water, they reluctantly agreed to take the drill seriously. It took me forever to fall asleep, partly because my cabin was freezing, but partly because I was nervous as all get-out. I was afraid that come morning, my resolve to prove my worth as a counselor by booking it to the waterfront at the first whistle would have melted into my usual staggering, bumbling, polar-bear-like attempts at running, which would result in the same situation as my LSP drill as a camper.
I repeat, ladies and gentlemen of the blogiverse: I did not know I could move that fast.
Everyone says that in emergencies, your instincts take over. Until very recently, I thought those instincts in me were to freeze up and let someone qualified take over. But you know what? You don't have to have a certificate to help. And I know now that I won't freeze up when my girls need me the most. I found that out today. Even though I knew all my girls were safe in the cabin, and I knew that it wasn't a real LSP, I ran to that waterfront like the lost swimmer was the most important person in the world to me. Even though I knew that there was no real danger, I acted as if there were.
If this is how I react when it's just practice, I think I've just received confirmation that I can do this in a legitimate emergency.
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