Junior Life Saver

July in suburban Philadelphia is hot. It is now and it was then, and in 1955 we had no air conditioning, just exhaust fans in the bedrooms to keep the damp air moving. As an eight-year-old my passion was baseball. I was the catcher on the midget league team that played at my brother’s Junior High school in Abingdon. Between practice days I could walk to the field at Highland Elementary School and play catch and have batting practice with my next-door neighbor Georgie. We would play for hours. One day I arrived home so flushed and exhausted that my Mom brought ice packs to cool me down, afraid that I would have a heat stroke. It seemed like just another day to me. On another sweltering day, as I was gulping down a giant glass of lemonade, my Dad cautioned me, saying that drinking that fast was bad for you. I remember this being the moment in which I realized that parents don’t know everything. It was hot and things that were cold were good. Seven up, ice cream and swimming pools. The suburbs were a great place to grow up; a place where a kid could be safely independent.

The best place to cool off was at the swimming pool at the YMCA where I went to summer camp. I could easily ride my bike to the Y. After breakfast each morning I would go to the basement deep freezer and take out a frozen tuna fish or ham sandwich that my Mom had made in batches for the week. I also got an aluminum Army surplus canteen that was frozen full with water. The ice would expand and spill out of the spout and I had to chip it off to screw the top on. Not sure why I never planned to allow for the expansion but maybe I eventually did. That would involve learning from experience and at that time in life I was living mostly in the present.

The Y had swimming lessons and you got moved from one class to another whenever you completed the to-do list at your level. At the time of this memory, I had grown from a pollywog to guppy and was now a minnow aspiring to be a fish. The category of flying fish made no sense to me and I had no desire to be a shark. I was happy where I was; the water was fun and most of the time was spent in free play. My big brother Allen was 12 1/2 and had finished what was then called the Junior Life Saving program. I bragged about that a lot and wasn’t discouraged when someone would challenge me with an impatient “So what?”. My brother was cool, that’s what. Cool as the pool.

That summer my parents chartered a sailboat and we spent our vacation on the Chesapeake. My Dad went to Annapolis and was a career Naval officer, but you wouldn’t really call him a “sailor”. There were so many mishaps that I’ll have to save that story for another 1000 words. The bay was huge and had hundreds of inlets and islands, places to drop anchor and row the dinghy ashore for camping and exploring, Allen and I would set out with a camp stove and Dinty Moore beef stew and set up house on our own, within view of the boat but out of earshot. One night we slept out on the beach, which was easily the best thing I had ever done. I probably enjoyed this more than he did.

Who knows how the time went by? I have a few clear images of things that happened but no real memory of what a typical day was like. At the end of one of those days during the cocktail hour when my parents would retreat to their grown-up cocoon and talk about things that were completely uninteresting, I was dawdling about the cove where we had dropped anchor, rowing the dinghy around in circles and practicing turning and stopping. I was master of all that I surveyed and ready to strike out beyond the horizon. But the shadows were getting longer and I hadn’t had dinner yet, so I headed back to the boat.

The dinghy stayed tied up to the fantail where there was a ladder up to the cockpit. I approached and slowed enough by back paddling to not ram the boat too hard and stood up to tie off. Not being the master that I thought, I lost my balance and fell overboard, losing hold of the painter and seeing the dinghy start to drift away. I was treading water like the fish I aspired to be when my mother looked over and in an annoyed tone shouted, “Now you go get it”, pointing to the little rowboat that was moving off.

I started swimming, confident that I could go faster than it and catch up, but the tide was ebbing and the breeze was moving it out of reach. I kept trying, unaware of how futile my efforts were until I got to the point of wearing out. A minnow only has to swim twenty five yards to get promoted. I got scared and called out for help. I could see Allen slip into the water without a splash and head toward me. “Don’t worry, Stephen, I’m coming.” I remembered one of the first things I had learned as a minnow was called the dead man’s float, where you lie face down and relax, coming up for air and then exhaling out into the water, but I didn’t have any time for that. I was too focused on my brother swimming out to get me.

When he got to me I was starting to panic. He was cool. He said, “Face me, put your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist and I’ll take you home.” I immediately knew I was safe, because he was a Junior Life Saver.