If These Kids Keep Drowning Themselves For A Chance To Make Out With Me I’m Going To Stop Saving Them

I never signed up to be a hero. I signed up to be a part time lifeguard at a rinky-dink Minnesotan pool to fund my summer of self-exploration. Friends and financial independence were going to be my jack and coke, liquoring me up for the best three months since that tennis camp when I discovered how to give a hickey. But there’s a storm raining on my parade, and it’s made of underage boys who keep intentionally drowning themselves to try and kiss me when I preform CPR.

I am this close to letting the next one drown. I’ve been playing the nice lifeguard for too long, losing all empathy for these swimtrucked Casanovas. They run when I tell them to walk, play Frisbee far too close to the sunbathing moms, and by my word the next one I see dap his friend before sinking to the bottom of the deep end will be my first kill.

37. Over three dozen Jr. High wannabes have given me the old kiss of almost death, and every time it unfolds the same. I slap back the grim reaper only to receive a chlorine-flavored smooch as my hero’s welcome. The crowd bellows a sultry laugh, delighted as their little scamp throws them peanuts, audience to this juvenile show where he is king clown. I see their sunburnt faces mock me, and take comfort knowing they soon shall gaze silently as I drown out his cry for help with my Glamour Magazine. My symbol of safety turned maverick, right before their UV protected eyes.

I am justified in my vendetta, completely sure that the trope of making out with a lifeguard during CPR is as frightening as it is unwanted. If I had wanted to kiss a preteen, thrusting him to gates of manhood so fast his Sketchers pop off, I still would not have because that is illegal. It may be passed off as the local rascal finally coming into his own, but tell me, if the boys were to do this at a TGI Fridays, would it then be weird? If they all fainted in a Home Depot, would we still find their antics as merry when locking lips with the head of the color swatch station? Would you laugh still as they made out with the mailman?

No, but for some reason I find myself employed in the only position where boys may fake death, invoke my moral and minimum wage responsibility as a guardian of life, then reveal it all for a kiss. No more. From my stand I will watch them, one by one as they vie for my attention from Poseidon’s cold grasp. There I will remain an Ice Queen, forever unimpressed by the speed they take on water.

This was to be my movie summer, the one I’d use to connect with coming of age movies for years to come, but now it will be one of judgment and jury, sullied by the felony tongues of Minnesotan youth.