The Chairman and the Crimson Witch

Episode II in the Continuing Misadventures of The Drowsy Lifeguard

By Tony Martins

In the first shared remembrance of my youthful days as The Drowsy Lifeguard (published here, in Galaxy Brain’s second edition), I recounted how I, a teenaged pool-watcher given to drowsiness, was discovered asleep in the pool changing room by a man whose swimming trunks I’d just stolen.

As disastrous as that sounds, it was really only the beginning.

Not long after the events of that “Asleep — and a Thief!” episode came the grossly negligent occurrences I like to call “The Chairman and the Crimson Witch.”

To begin, a quick recap: At the age of 18, I was summer employed as, yes, a drowsy lifeguard, at one of Toronto’s smallest and sleepiest condominium pools. So sleepy, in fact, was the pool, and so drowsy was I, that my key challenge was not to save lives but merely to stay awake.

Indeed, a shallow and swimmer-less pool was exactly what I’d stared into for many drowsy hours on the day of the aforementioned gross negligence. The weather was just cool and overcast enough that, predictably, I’d been chilling totally solo for the entire morning. 

In the face of this poolside solitude, I remained true to my name. I became seriously drowsy.

In a cool breeze and only sporadic sunshine, I was lying on my side near the edge of the pool, fighting to stay awake by reading a book. For a while it seemed to work. Then everything went dark.

I was awoken, abruptly, by the familiar sound of pool area’s enclosure gate slamming shut. (The gate had a strong spring hinge and would swing closed with great force if allowed to.)

And so, I was no longer alone. A middle-aged gentleman had entered the scene. 

With a start, I sat up, attempting to appear alert as he approached and handed me the identity card that the condo residents used for approved entry to their recreation facilities. I placed the card in the little plastic box we used for safekeeping and then proceeded to behave as an awake lifeguard should: I watched the pool.

The man, having said nary a word to me, had not come to simply sunbathe, however. Instead, he promptly entered the water and began to do something I found quite astonishing. He began to swim laps.

This action was remarkable because no one, and I mean no one, swam laps in this pool. Its small size meant that any swimmer seeking exercise would have to perform a copious and surely aggravating number of turns. Really, it was a glorified wading pool and people swimming for fitness immediately appeared slightly foolish. (In fact I suspect that the man had come to get in some glorified “laps” only because he knew very well that in the cool and cloudy weather he’d have the whole shebang to himself.)

In any case, slightly amazed yet still palpably groggy, I had an actual swimmer to watch over for perhaps the first time all summer. 

Yet the significant challenge of doing so became clear almost immediately. 

The man, you see, was quite skilled in the water. His freestyle stroke was steady and rhythmic, his shape moving back-and-forth, back-and-forth, in a mesmerizing metronomic cadence that never wavered in it’s entrancing consistency.

Seeing this — feeling this — and fearing the very real prospect of drifting off again, I devised a two-fold sleep-defense strategy. I would take deep breaths and yawn as much as possible (to feed by brain with oxygen) and I would shake my head back and forth, vigorously, whenever my eyes started to close (to jostle my brain back into a state of wakefulness).

For a while it seemed to work. Then everything went dark.

I was jolted awake again after what seemed like a short time but not by a slamming gate. This time it was out of panic.

Quickly I scanned the pool, half expecting to see the man’s inert form floating face-down in the heavily chlorinated water.

Thankfully, I saw no such thing. The water was calm. The pool, and in fact the entire pool area, were once again completely empty, still, and almost silent. 

Puzzled by the man’s utter disappearance, I fumbled with the plastic identity card box. It, too, was empty!

Now struggling to make sense of what had taken place, I felt my teenaged powers of deduction kick in. The man, I reasoned, must have finished his laps and then stealthily retrieved his card and exited the pool (this time not allowing the gate to slam), seemingly to avoid interruption of my blissful slumber.

How thoughtful of him, I thought. 

Also, how strange.

But regardless of the episode’s peculiar nature, in those first moments of wakefulness my lifeguard self-image had been shredded into tatters — tatters dripping with shame. 

I had had one job. I had had one swimmer to watch while he swam a few laps. And I’d literally fallen asleep at the switch.

I tried to mitigate the sting of this devastating truth by reasoning with myself, pointing to how because the man was a very strong swimmer he had been in absolutely no danger in our Mickey Mouse pool.This optimistic assessment helped a little, and yet the realistic side of me still very much expected that within minutes the deck-side phone would ring and my irate boss would summarily dismiss me of my duties. 

In this internalize atmosphere of high anxiety and heavy self-recrimination, I waited.

And I waited.

And, incredibly, absolutely nothing happened for the rest of the afternoon. 

No swimmers. No authorities appearing. No boss calling. No condemnations or dismissals. 

Nothing.

I closed the pool and went home, irrationally hoping and praying that the incident would somehow miraculously blow over and be forgotten.

Alas, such a blow over was not to be. 

The next day I was breezily back on the job when I received a rather unpleasant visitor whose business had nothing to do with aquatic activity.

The visitor was the notoriously tenacious property manager who patrolled the condo complex like a one-woman tempest. I’d been warned about her and her firebrand personality but until the day in question we’d crossed paths only a few times and without incident.

She was wiry with cropped, dark hair and often wore a tight-fitting dress of an alarming crimson colour. The hue suited her personality. She walked briskly and with purpose, radiating both tenacity and authority.

When she appeared it was mid-morning. She was wearing the crimson dress, sporting a look of hellfire to match, and wielding a long piece of paper in her hand like a scythe. It was a complaint form that I could see had been filled in with heavy handwriting in one long, block paragraph. 

She waved the form around and began to rant. She said this, she said that, spitting forth her words in full outrage mode, while I nodded my head sheepishly and muttered vague apologies.

And then, as if the confrontation were not traumatic enough, by piecing together the glimpses I’d managed to steal of the wildly waving form with the clues I could glean from the woman’s ravings, I learned that the previous day’s sleeping incident was potentially even more damning to my lifeguard career than I’d dared imagine.

It turned out that the man who had entered the pool area while I slept, had swam in the pool while I slept, and had exited the pool while I slept — this man was no ordinary condo resident.

He was, in fact, the chairman of the condominium board.

In my head, another menacing countdown had begun, at the end of which I my lifeguard days would be on-the-spot terminated.

The fire-breathing property manager spoke afoul of me for a few more minutes but she did not, as I had expected, lower the boom. Instead, she suddenly strode away, still tense with outrage, having taken no specific action against me. 

This allowed only what felt like a momentary stay of execution. I reasoned that the written report would immediately go to my boss at the home office and that he would now surely and swiftly bring an end to my employment.

Thoroughly shaken and still awaiting anxiously to be axed, I completed the remainder of my shift, bid goodbye to the lifeguard colleague who showed up for the late shift, and trudged home, expecting an inevitable phone call.

And yet, and yet.

Unfortunately, gentle reader, at risk of leaving you feeling unsatisfied or even outraged, I must humbly report that in this instance justice was never served.

Incredibly, my dismissal never came.

I returned to the pool the next day, guessing that perhaps the boss would be there to give me the heave me in person.

He never showed.

And, yep, he never called.

And thus, most stupendously of all, I was never fired.

I completed the remainder of my summer assignment without hearing a single additional word about the incident from anyone.

What saved me? It’s likely that it was simply a matter of supply and demand.

An extreme lifeguard shortage had gripped the city that summer. I could not be fired simply because there was absolutely no one available to replace me.

The condo board had been faced with a painful choice: contend with the antics of The Drowsy Lifeguard for a few more weeks or grapple with long periods of unsupervised pool hours.

They’d chosen the lesser of two evils.

Normal service resumed and the cooling days of the dwindling summer went by without incident. September arrived, blessedly, and off I went to university with those stolen swimming trunks in tow. I bid adieu to my teenage years and never watched over a pool again.

I’d certainly learned a harsh lesson — but not the one you might think. 

My foibles and follies as The Drowsy Lifeguard were career-defining moments, making it crystal clear that the noble mission of the lifeguard was absolutely not my calling.

It simply cut too much into my sleeping time.