I hate it when I save some ungrateful person’s life. Some people are skilled in the Heimlich maneuver, while others have been professionally trained in CPR. I, on the other hand, have a gift for saving middle-aged women in hotel pools and old men in the ocean. It happened three times during my first twenty-one years. Such God-affirming experiences taught me the following three rules of life-saving, which I still utilize today:
RULE NO. 1: NEVER LET NOT BEING A GOOD SWIMMER STOP YOU FROM SAVING ANOTHER PERSON’S LIFE.
My first save was at the Howard Johnson’s motor lodge in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida in 1978. I’m not a bad swimmer but I can’t tread water. In addition, for some inexplicable reason, my body does not float. I was busy swimming laps (width-wise) in the motel pool just beyond the point where the water crested from 5Ft on its way to 8Ft. Coming up for air, I noticed a flowered bathing cap bobbing in the water like a spastic buoy. A middle-aged woman, flapping her arms and falling backwards, was quietly muttering "hel-pep, hel-pep" in the pathetic way humans do when something is happening to them over which they have absolutely no control.
Moving swiftly, I placed my hands firmly on the woman’s back and gave her a powerful shove into the shallow end. Being that I couldn’t tread water, there could be no slow wading to the side of the pool with the woman in tow. With both of us safely in the shallow end, I asked her if she was okay.
"You made me swallow water," she said with the same bewildered tone she had used to cry for her life.
"What?" I asked.
"You made me swallow water," she repeated.
My mother, who had witnessed the entire event poolside, interceded on my behalf.
"So what, you’re alive, aren’t you?" she said.
That summed it up for me. I went back to my laps, pushing myself even harder, and dreaming of the $2.99 "All-You-Can-Eat Fried Clam Dinner" I would be having at the HoJo’s restaurant that night.
RULE NO. 2: IF PRESENTED WITH THE CHOICE OF SAVING SOMEONE’S LIFE OR CAUSING MINOR INJURY, IGNORE THE INEVITABLE CRITICS AND CHOOSE LIFE.
My second save occurred under nearly identical circumstances as the first, except that as I darted to rescue the floundering lady, I was hit by a debilitating toe cramp. I’ve discovered over the years that the only way to alleviate a toe cramp is by guzzling Yoo-Hoo. With no Yoo-Hoo handy, I gutted it out and sprung into action. I’m the first to admit I overcompensated because of the toe cramp, and unintentionally gave the woman a pretty good shot to the shoulder blades, causing her to clumsily flip over the safety rope.
Considering that I had saved her life, however, her ingratitude was mystifying.
"You made me swallow water," she said.
This time I was ready: "Not as much as you would have swallowed if you had drowned."
"I also got a rope burn," she whined in the direction of my mother, who, as usual, was seated poolside with a pina colada and The National Inquirer, and had observed the whole commotion.
"So what, at least you’re alive," my mother interjected, having no patience for the woman’s foolishness.
I didn’t doubt the woman’s skin got chaffed, but she showed absolutely no grace by denying me the opportunity to explain about the toe cramp. Instead, she gave me a dirty look and stormed out of the pool. I summarily concluded that Baywatch had unrealistically raised the public’s expectations of real-world life-saving.
RULE NO. 3: NEVER LET A B-MOVIE ACTOR LOOK-A-LIKE DETER YOU FROM A RESCUE.
My third (thus far) rescue, and the one I’m most proud of, occurred at a majestic, Aztec temple-style hotel in Acapulco, Mexico. Unknown to the naive guests, there was a powerful undertow in the gulf that had been surging all morning. Sitting on the beach and thoroughly enjoying my book, Foucault’s "Discipline and Punish," I heard the screams of lost souls getting pulled down in the water. Unlike stacked milk bottles at a boardwalk game of chance, three-quarters of the sixty people in the water tumbled down. I instantly set my sights on rescuing a woman who held a coconut shell rum runner drink with both hands and wore a yellow visor and over-sized glasses. She was only in knee-deep water but a riptide quickly slammed her down hard; the coconut shell knocked her indispensable eye-wear to the continental shelf. Totally unprepared for life, she didn’t stand a chance.
Another Good Samaritan beat me to her, however, and grabbed a hold of her arm. Something of a Sauro Family Vacation Zelig, I recognized the Good Samaritan from the breakfast buffet, the bullfight tour, the hotel disco, and the cliff divers’ show. A large, lumbering man with disheveled white hair, he looked exactly like the actor George Kennedy — "Naked Gun" George Kennedy that is, not "Cool Hand Luke" George Kennedy.
A powerful wave came in and rudely knocked George to the surf. Too heavy to carry, I grabbed him under his arms and dragged him out of the water and to safety. Once the dust (sand actually) had settled and the shouting had subsided, I vaguely deduced that, at the moment I imprudently interfered, Mr. Kennedy was performing his own rescue procedure – apparently some type of "fall down and tug" maneuver of which I was unaware – on the Visor Woman. He made it quite clear that, having fought in World War II, he did not ever need to be rescued from anything.
This time, with the rescues being old hat, my mother didn’t get involved. I did, however, receive a empathetic look from a midget who had heroically stepped in and saved Visor Woman at the time I was towing George through some kid’s sandcastle. The dwarf’s low center of gravity and crouched stance were the perfect tools for combating the undertow.
At something of a makeshift Mass the hotel held in a conference room the next morning, both the little person and George Kennedy were seated behind me and my mother. When it came time to exchange handshakes during the "Peace Be With You" segment, the heroic little man heartily shook my hand, but George Kennedy blatantly ignored me, first kissing his wife, and then clasping his hands together and bowing his head in the direction of an Asian man standing in the row in front of me.
Rest easy, however, because although I have been accused of battery, crippled by toe cramps, and even royally snubbed, I will be there when you need me.
END OF UNGRATEFUL