Goosebump Moments

How to ensure aquatic stories have happy endings

By Bill Plessinger

The monotony of these days is occasionally broken by outstanding moments. Some memories are personal. I can recall the exact spot on the road on which I was driving when I heard on the radio that a second plane had slammed into the World Trade Center, and that it was an attack, not an accident. I remember the way a giant flag was draped over the field four months later at the National College Football Championship when Ohio State beat Miami. I recall the fear and excitement in my gut when I proposed to my wife. I remember the day of the week when I received the phone call that my father had lost his battle with cancer. It was a Wednesday.

I call these “Goosebump Moments.” 

These unforgettable moments cause the senses to tingle, or punch us in the gut. Time slows or even stands still for a moment. Most times, we feel goosebumps when we are either cold or scared. It is an automatic response from our hairy ancestors thousands of years ago. Back then, thanks to the process of horripilation, muscles contracted and forced the hair straight up. This made the body appear bigger to animals that wanted to eat us, and helped trap an insulating layer of air when we were cold. Now we wear clothing and aren’t always watching for animals that want to eat us. A lot of our ancestral hair is gone, but we still feel the goosebumps.

There are probably more goosebump moments in aquatic activity than in any other parks and rec job. Lifeguards experience days and weeks of monotony and routine, peppered by an occasional emergency. I remember my first lifeguard gig at a hotel pool in New York. If there was one swimmer in a 5-hour shift, it was a busy day. I was the only guard, but realistically didn’t need a second. I had no pool manager. It was just me at a small outdoor pool. I had no rescues, and the summer passed uneventfully. It would not always be that way.

Endless Stories

Those who have been in aquatics long enough undoubtedly have stories to share with varying levels of drama. I still remember my first rescue at a summer-camp, inland pond, and the look in the child’s eyes as I reached under the water and grabbed his arm as he was sinking into blackness. In the decade I spent guarding on Lake Erie, I remember one missing-child emergency that eventually ended in a human chain. One guard quit that day after thinking she had stepped on the missing boy’s arm (it was a dead fish). The boy was eventually located, having walked home without telling anyone. It was a happy ending, but I imagine the boy caught a lot of grief from his parents.

More dramatic was receiving word that a potentially suicidal man was in Lake Erie, planning to keep swimming north until he ran out of strength. When we finally located him through binoculars, he was already far off the coast. I kayaked out, caught up with him, and kept him talking until the Coast Guard arrived and pulled him out. The massive amount of alcohol he had consumed heightened his sense of despair, and made him a slower swimmer. If his friend had not alerted us, if we didn’t have a kayak, if we had not seen him, and if the Coast Guard wasn’t nearby, he would not have made it back alive. 

Some stories don’t have happy endings. One summer, there was a jet-ski accident close to our swim area. The inexperienced rider slammed into the side of a larger boat at 60 miles per hour and was killed instantly. To make matters worse, the force of the impact severed one of his arms. For the next week, guards were on patrol from dawn to dusk to walk the shore, so if the arm did wash up, a child wouldn’t find it. Police search-and-rescue teams eventually found the arm submerged near the coast, but the memory remains. 

Goosebump moments have continued in my current position as Aquatic Manager with the city of Westerville, Ohio. I received a phone call that a 3-year old required rescue breathing from one of our lifeguards after a close call in a pool; the child walked out of the hospital with no ill effects and no memory of the incident. She later participated in swim lessons. I remember the chills I had after reading an email from one of my guards who recounted being on vacation and performing lifesaving CPR on a woman who had collapsed at a pizza joint. The lifeguard did this in front of the woman’s family. The town’s fire chief said the woman was only alive because of the guard’s actions. I couldn’t be prouder. Just this week, a former guard emailed me that the abdominal thrusts she used at work on an elderly woman choking on her dinner cleared her airway and saved her life. The lifeguard’s special training gave her the confidence to do what needed to be done. 

Do Something

Now that I have been around for a while and have some perspective, I think back to my first lifeguard job and how unprepared I was had there been an emergency.  

I used to think nothing could go wrong. Most of the time, nothing did. But all of the time, something could. Drownings don’t happen because only one thing goes wrong. They happen when there are multiple failures and the layers of protection are removed. It’s the perfect storm of failure and lack of oversight—a pool gate is propped open, a parent isn’t paying attention, a guard is looking at another child in the seconds it takes for someone to get into trouble. How do we prevent this? Train, learn, and repeat. Take what we know and pass it on.

There are endless opportunities to find information to become a better guard or aquatic professional. Begin with the American Red Cross lifeguard manual. There are plenty of presentations to watch online and reports to read. Many of these are free. Professional organizations offer guidance and instruction. Podcasts are available. Many communities have gatherings of pool managers who discuss what has worked for them.

The goosebump moments of my career—both good and bad—will be forever in my mind. When I retire, those will be the capstone moments, even the ones where I wasn’t  present, because I helped create an environment of accountability. I pushed for an aquatic program where training and skill preparation were deemed important to those who worked there. I had enough influence so the guards took those life skills with them and made the world a better place.  

Bill Plessinger is the Aquatic Manager for the city of Westerville, Ohio. Reach him at william.plessinger@westerville.org.