Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell

Well, the Internet is working again for the time being. I suspect this problem will recur from time to time because its onset and repair were both unannounced...which to me means that it was self-inflicted and self-resolved. Lets face it, we don't have control over these machines anymore. They do as they will and we are now forced to accommodate ourselves to them. The Internet is now so much a part of second nature that it has the feel of something like meteorological phenomena..."Its raining today, I suppose I will have to wear my rain-coat," "The Internet is down today, well I guess I will play computer solitaire all night."

You have not missed much...which follows directly from my not having done much. I did finally get a membership at the local gym which should make life 43 times more pleasant. There is too much sitting around for me here and it runs me down and makes my sleep problematic. I went in yesterday and despite the fact that I have not internalized the commu-metric system of measurement and scale I did quite well. Its not the best gym in the world but they have almost everything I need, and its close, so I will take it.

I did have one rather interesting occurrence yesterday afternoon...my frozen water rescue incident. Let me see if I can set the stage. Outside of the Humanities School there is a fake moat/river running around the newer buildings where my Danish course takes place. It was a day like any other...dreary and unspeakably cold. I was leaving after a typical class in Danish and scuttling along to catch the first metro so I would not have to wait long in the cold, but then everything changed. I am not sure if I saw or heard the ensuing trouble...I suspect I intuited that something was afoot with my 6th lifeguarding sense.

The 6th lifeguarding sense will be recognized by some of my fellow lifeguards and ex-lifeguards, but for the rest of you a brief explanation is due. After around a decade as undoubtedly one of the more accomplished lifeguards in the United States I have incorporated deep into my unconsciousness a sense of swimming pool rules and regulations, etc...In times of despair, as I walked in tall, long and proud strides around the pool in my short red shorts with whistle in hand, the lifeguarding 6th sense has allowed me to respond when conscious reflection would be too slow or timid. "Don't double-bounce on the diving board!" "Walk!" "No diving!" Often this sense follows you outside of the pool and you feel an urge to tell children at the supermarket to walk, etc...

A few years have passed since I hung up that fanny-pack of first aid supplies, the short red shorts, and the Fox 40 whistle and I began to think that the sense was in decline. Sure at times I would wake in a cold sweat hearing the shrill sound of Fox 40 whistles with visions of lifeguards pointing, in accordance with pool policy, to the site of a rescue in progress..."who was making the rescue?" "what kind of rescue?" etc... But even the nightmares have subsided. Yesterday took me back to a different time and place, a simpler time and place.

The fake moat/river was angry that day my friends like an old man returning soup. As I turned the corner from the building toward the metro station I sensed trouble brewing on the frozen fake moat/river. I wheeled around to the sight of a young girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years of age, stepping out on to the 1/2 inch ice. I am not sure what she was thinking, maybe it was a childish impulse, maybe she thought that beyond that frozen pass lie the shores of Valhalla of Nordic mythology. I know what I was thinking...she is going to fall through.

It was not like the movies where everyone freezes as the eerie sound of ice cracking fills the air to the tune of a dramatic soundtrack, rather the ice simply broke and she fell backward into the frozen depths. I ran as if carried by the wind, my arrival at the scene no doubt quickened by the fact that I was only two steps away. I was acting on instinct, lifeguarding instinct. My first thought was to activate the emergency action plan, but as I reached for the trusty Fox 40 whistle that so often hung around my neck I realized this time would be different...I was going alone, without rescue tube or my trusty team behind me...or even my short red shorts, this would put my considerable skill to the test.

As I leapt into the water (ok, stepped into the water) I would like to tell you that the only thing running through my mind was the child's safety, but my first thought was how ungodly cold the water was...this after my mind began working again from the temporary hiccup in my mental processes brought on by the icy waters. "Surely Tim, a former lifeguard of your accomplishment and stature, began to think instantly of the child's welfare after the initial shock settled...after all, so many times in the past you gallantly entered the water in response to a child's cries for help (even if this child was crying for help in that non-sensical babble, Danish)." Well, no, my second thought was why I hadn't thought about how much broken ice hurt and scratched you up as you move through it...but my third thought was of the child, and with my ability to think in crises this third thought arrived quickly! As I grabbed the child and lifted her to safety I realized how weak my once powerful body had been reduced to in the past few years...this girl weighed maybe 60 lbs and it took two attempts to lift her over the concrete edge. Maybe the commu-kilograms weigh more or something, or gravity's pull is stronger in Scandinavia.

As I made my way out of the frozen abyss below I asked the frightened girl if she was ok...in a language she did not understand. Her and her friend left quickly to return to wherever they came from. Meanwhile, and throughout the entire process, the Danes simply walked by...sure most looked at the spectacle...some may have even uttered some derogatory comment about the stupid cowboy American, always trying to save the world...but I felt as though I was simply doing my duty...a duty that I first took up when I was 15 and entered that American Red Cross Lifeguarding course at the Cypress Creek YMCA...a duty that I had instilled in others during my years as pool manager and head lifeguard...a duty that had proven exemplary during my time as a lifeguarding instructor...a duty that has become part of my nature and that every good lifeguard knows. Though the whistle and fanny-pack may have been hung up for good, those short red shorts are tattooed over the rear-end of my soul!

I left, a cold-shivering fool, for the metro with a smile in my heart...and when I got home the heat in my apartment didn't work!