THE GUARD

I never lifeguarded. The closest I ever came was when a bud and I painted the swimming pool at Green Hills when we were collegians. He was a guard there and a much better swimmer than I.

But I suppose I did lifeguard earlier this week. I didn't have the big chair. I didn't have the sun because it was at an indoor pool. But I had 6 kids to watch. I also had some help: my wife.

Good thing, too. Because I went to sleep. Which is darned easy for me to do. All could swim except our 14-month old, but CQ had close watch on her until my nap was over.

The bigger kids were diving where they weren't supposed to. But I'm a grandad and that in itself calls for letting them do what they're probably not supposed to do. Or as our 12 year-old granddaughter said, "They were short, so it didn't matter." I really didn't see any swan dives; mainly cannonballs, some head firsts but not deep, more like a gliding head-first which our granddaughter, the tallest of the three girls couldn't quite perfect.

But what in my sleepy eyes was ok, I kept thinking, how in the world do real lifeguards stay awake? I didn't even have the warming rays of ol' sol to further weaken me. Of course, they have the protection of sunglasses, so maybe they do catch some zzzs along with their rays.

It's a good thing I wasn't a strong enough swimmer to lifeguard. I'm afraid if I'd had a real lifeguard chair, that I might have fallen from it being awakened by a too exuberant cry of "Marco Polo"and I would have tumbled along with the chair as in The Sandlot.