Doesn’t everyone go to gymnastics and have swim conversations?

So I was sitting at gymnastics one day talking about–what else? Swimming. I was talking with a friend from church who used to have a pool. She was quite athletic as a girl, and I thought she’d told me that she’d done swim team as a teenager. I was mistaken. She’d played basketball and softball, but said she loved swimming too much to compete in it. She did become a lifeguard in her teen years, however, and her 8 year old daughter is quite the fish.

She told me about going to the beach with her family one day and noticing a huge drop off in the lake after a sand bar. She warned her family about it, and proceeded to watch a boy fall into the drop off. The boy’s father tried to save him but was drowning as well.

My friend immediately went into lifeguard mode–some 20 years after her training. She told her husband to keep her daughter. She grabbed a couple innertubes and swam out to the drowning victims. She called to another person she saw at the beach to help her rescue the father and son. She described how the adrenaline took over and she had strength she didn’t normally possess. Her quick thinking saved both father and son’s lives. The man’s wife was so grateful she was speechless.

This story was in response to my concern that my thin daughter may be too small to actually be a lifeguard. My friend reassured me that adrenaline is a powerful force.