Many years ago, I asked my parents to pay the expenses for a professional lifeguard class as my eighteenth birthday gift. I'd been on the swim team at school, and although I had not excelled at it, I felt comfortable in the water. I thought that being a lifeguard in the summers while I got my two-year degree in auto mechanics sounded like a good plan.
I talked to my coach about it, and learned that the state where we lived had strict requirements for the job. I'd have to take a 5-day class, and earn certificates in resuscitation and first aid, as well as lifesaving. These were the equivalents to today's CPR, first responder, and water rescue. The closest course offered was near the city 80 miles away, so I would have to stay there. But, he told me, the class was held on a private lake in a wooded area, and there was a campground. I could stay there very cheaply, and most everyone did. I was a camper and hiker, so I already had a tent and sleeping bag. I was set.
"I know of two other people from the area that are attending, Mack," the coach told me, "Brian Dossler and Renee Cuban." I knew Brian from our swim team, but Renee Cuban! There was a name from times past.
When I was a kid, a few of the neighborhood boys and I would hang out during summer vacation at the community pool. We'd roll our trunks in towels and walk across town to swim all day, then walk home, drying in the sun. We learned swimming and diving and let the pool's underwater return pipe blast off our trunks, and generally had a great time.
One of the things we did was dare each other to cop feels from the girls. This required swimming up behind them secretly, brushing a boob or a butt, and diving away with a splash to make our escape underwater. My target was always Renee Cuban. I liked her looks. She was tall and blonde and had a nice smile. We were in the same grade school, but she was very smart and had a different circle of friends than I did. We never actually talked together, it was just kid's stuff. She probably didn't even remember me.
When her parents moved away in sixth grade, I lost touch with her. But I'd seen her again this last year from across the pool at one of the statewide swim meets. She was a very good diver, and took home the silver. I still liked her looks.
I thought about Renee a lot, waiting for summer and the class to begin. I told Brian about her, but he was the class clown, and just made a joke about it. We hitched a ride with my dad, and arrived early at the lake, registered for class at the office, and set up our tents in the camping area. There were some people there already, all ages, and I kept my eye open for Renee, but it was still early.
Brian needed to see an instructor about something, so I walked down to the lake to get the lay of the land. It was a tiny lake, maybe a quarter of a mile across. A third of it was roped off as a swimming area and was gravel bottomed, the rest was surrounded by cabins and trailers and fairly high trees. There was a low and high board, a high guard chair, picnic tables, a snack stand and concrete block changing rooms. Apparently, people would drive out from the city for a day's recreation for a small fee. It was homey and I felt comfortable there.
I was getting a soda at the snack stand when I saw Renee. She looked great; tall, very slender, with long legs, no boobs to speak of, and a beautiful elfin face. She was wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit with her school crest on it. She kept her blonde hair in a ponytail.
I walked over and said, "Hi, Renee, remember me?"
She smiled broadly and said, "Sure. You're Mackensie Davis."
We shook hands. She still had a great smile, and I noticed for the first time, green eyes. We sat down at one of the tables and talked. I was usually very shy around girls. I was still a virgin, which in all fairness to me was not that uncommon then. My experience with girls consisted of standing around in the gym at a few dances, and necking a little at my junior prom with a girl I didn't know very well. But I found it very easy to talk to Renee. She had the same plan that I did: work as a lifeguard while going to school. She was going to study biology at the State University, and wanted to be a teacher. We really seemed to hit it off. While we were talking, another girl walked up and Renee introduced her as Julie, her tent mate. Julie wasn't taking the class, she was a year older than Renee, had a job, and was keeping Renee company and having some summer fun. Then Brian showed up, and we did the introduction thing again. Brian asked Julie if she wanted to get a coke, and they walked off.
Let's go over to the office, there's something I want to check," Renee said. We walked over to where rules and notices hung in a glass frame.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's a requirement of the Department of Health," she answered, "Public pools have to post the fecal coliform test results every day. See, it's listed here. It's very low."
"What's a fecal coliform?" I asked.
"It's harmful bacteria, from babies crapping their diapers in the water, mainly. They control it with chlorination, just like any pool. See?" She pointed to a small metal shack at the shore near the rope. "That's the chlorination equipment and the pump. There's a big pipe that runs across the lake near the rope. But you know what? Fish still live in the lake! If you stand still, you'll feel them nibbling at your toes."
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"We live near here," she grinned, "My family comes here all the time."
Our first class was at 9:00 AM, so we headed over to a roped-off area and a big tent with picnic tables that served as our classroom. There were workbook handouts, forms about our previous experience to fill out, and releases to sign. They introduced five instructors for the thirty of us, and they explained how the course would progress. We hoped to have classroom work from 8:00 AM to 11:00, a lunch break, into the water through the hot part of the day, then a short lab until 5:00 PM. It was a full schedule. Then they started right in on resuscitation.
Renee disappeared during lunch. Brian and I returned to the tents to get our trunks on and talked about the class and the girls. He seemed to like Julie. I saw him during class checking her out as she fooled around on the boards in her yellow bikini. She was very attractive.
In the afternoon the instructors evaluated our swimming ability and split us up into groups of four to six students per instructor. Renee was placed in the advanced group. I hit the middle with Brian. At the end of the swim period as we were breaking up, Renee swam over, looked around, and suddenly gripped both of my asscheeks in her hands and squeezed hard.
"Payback," she yelled, laughing, and dove away with a big splash. My God, she DID remember!
We started to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a crappy looking dummy, then dismissed for the day. The three of us joined Julie at the snack stand, where we had some burgers and watched the "civilians" swim, that is, the customers using the lake. We decided we'd have a cookout the next night at the guys' tents. Then we walked back to the campground and said goodbye. Brian and I spent an hour carting wood to feed the fire ring, and then we went down to the snack stand and arranged to get raw hotdogs and buns and such for the next evening. We studied our workbooks until it got too dark to read, then hit the hay.
The next morning as we were making tea and oatmeal on my little gasoline stove, Julie stopped by our camp and asked if the girls could bring anything to the cookout.
