June Rolls In

by Kailey Aiken

Happy June! And more importantly, happy summer-weather-incoming! The sun has finally come out this week, so lifeguards will actually start to look like we sit on the beach all day, and not behind a desk hiding from the sun.

With warmer weather comes more crowds, and in turn, more cases (rescues). Beach 97th Street logged our first case of the summer on Tuesday evening around 5:15 p.m., when the beach was windy, the water choppy, and going for a swim was definitely not on my to-do list.

It was a tale as old as time: a large group of teenagers playing in the ocean on the sandbar. The current pulls them towards the rip. We whistle at them to move them closer to the sandbar. They try to swim over, but one or two of them aren’t the strongest swimmers and they keep swimming, but they’re not moving.

For this specific case, only one kid really couldn’t make it to the safety of the sandbar. So we stripped off our parkas, sweatshirts, and sweatpants, dove into the icy water, and brought him in. And of course, explained to the rest of his buddies that they had to swim far away from the rip current.

The kid we brought in was very, very thankful to the lifeguards. When we asked for his information for our log (which people sometimes give us a hard time about), he said, “My information? I’ll give you guys my paycheck!”

While we didn’t take him up on that offer, maybe we should think about assigning someone to come down to the shoreline with a tip jar after every case.

As predicted, the famed senior skip day has returned to Beach 97th Street. Probably the biggest single group skip I’ve seen so far occurred on Monday, when herds of students marched down the dunes and took over the entirety of Beach 94th Street. Even the lifeguard chair wasn’t safe — it was surrounded by spike ball games, volleyball circles, towels, and loudspeakers. One kid even tried to leave his empty beer bottles under the chair while the lifeguard was sitting on it.

Obviously, the lifeguard told the senior skipper, “You can’t leave these here.”

Skipper: “Well, they’re not mine.”

Lifeguard: “Well, they’re definitely not mine. The garbage is up there.”

Defeated, the skipper walked away with his empties and placed them somewhere I would bet money was not the garbage all the way up by the dunes. At least he attempted to put his garbage somewhere semi-helpful — the rest of the beach looked like a complete mess by the time senior skip day left the sand.

Aside from piles of garbage, skip day produces another issue: really, really drunk teenagers. By 4 p.m., in the span of twenty minutes, two different groups of kids had to carry their friends off of the beach and up to EMS to get some help for their over-served, barely able to stand buddies.

I’m sure school on Tuesday was a great time for them. Looking forward to seeing what the next round of senior skip days will bring!