Friday, November 19, 2010

Visual Essay: A lifeguards observations



I worked for seven years as a lifeguard in the trailer park I grew up in. Year after year, the other guards and I would see teenage girls getting pregnant. It was a bit of a moral epidemic in our neighborhood. Shamefully, the way we dealt with it, was that we all bet on who would be the next girl to walk through the gates with a baby stroller. Money was never really exchanged but the concept was there. For years I bet on the same girl. I don't know why, but I did. Maybe it was because every summer she had a different boyfriend, or maybe it was the friends she hanged out with. I always bet on her. Two years after quitting my job as a lifeguard, I did end up bumping into that girl while visiting home one summer. She was going college, focused in her studies and was making something of herself. I was relieved that not everyone would be anchored in the trailer park that I grew up in, within the fate I ignorantly doomed upon everyone. We all make choices, and we all make mistakes.



2 comments:

pete ryan said...

this is a great piece!

Tami Cohen said...

gorgeous piece. great story as well