Here's Hoping They Don't Grow Up Stupid

I said I'd only write while in Chicago if something inspired me to. I figured I'd want a break from the computer, and in all honesty, the tendonitis in my wrists is significantly better after just a few days' withdrawal.

Truth be told, since leaving LA Thursday night, there've been a number of occurrences worth writing about, and I've been trying to wrap my head around each one. But for now, I'm going to stick with the most recently compelling event, which took place last night.

My parents like to take off work when I bring the kids to town and plan real daytrips and outings, usually involving the outdoors, to ensure that we don't spend our limited time together zoning out in front of the TV. It's tiring, but usually fun. Yesterday, we took the boys to a mini-amusement park during the day, Kiddie Land, which caters to the least-pretty clientele I've seen in a long time, I'm just saying. And every single ride for "kiddies" the height of mine is simply a variation on the last, revolving in a strict circular motion. There was a roller coaster there, but Y said it looked too "splintery" to go on, and I kind of agreed. There was also a pirate ship that rocks back and forth until you're almost upside down, and I took one look at it and was instantly eleven years old again, there with my day camp, vomiting into a garbage can and sipping 7-Up afterward. I remembered that pirate ship all too well.

Kiddie Land wasn't our most informed daytrip. But nonetheless, we had a decent time, picked up burgers and ate dinner on the beach in Wilmette - a really suburban, preppy, white-bread area. The weather was incredible, and at 6 PM, the lake was still crowded with teenagers and families. Elan and Ariel are never happier than at a beach, and I like that I can relax a little bit when taking them there - with so much space for them to run and play, I don't have to worry constantly about losing them.

So once we'd eaten, we headed towards the edge of the water. Y looked out at the lake and commented on how calm the waves were, compared to those in the ocean at home. I hadn't been to the lakefront in Chicago for many years, and I'd forgotten how pristine they keep the sand here, how well-kept and organized the bathrooms and patio tables were. It was really lovely.

We stood ankle-deep in the water, talking, and watching Elan meticulously fill a bucket with water as each wave rolled over his feet, and then run to pour it into a hole he'd dug in the sand nearby. We talked about how he was a man on a mission, how, in fact, he was always on some sort of mission, how seriously he took every task he engaged in.

Behind us, Ariel was leading a wild game of Frisbee with my father and brother, diving into the sand and rolling around in it with abandon, and we talked about how tactile he was, how he was ruled by his senses, how he couldn't resist the pull of trying and feeling something new against his skin.

Ariel giggled and shrieked with delight, running over the disk he'd himself thrown.
Elan furrowed his brow and focused on timing his trips to the hole with the pace of the tide.

Next to us, four teenagers were laughing and leaping into the waves. Two boys, about fifteen years old, one thickly built and the other so thin that from a profile view, we wondered if he was even there, attempted to show off for two younger-looking girls, likely sisters, in green, tight sweatpants with the label "Hollister" plastered across the butt. The boys belly-flopped and pushed each other, and the girls rolled their eyes and giggled, and Y and I smiled at each other, as if to say, "Yeah, they look dumb, but who can't relate?"

I turned my attention to my feet for awhile, rolling the wet sand between my toes. When I glanced up again, I noticed that the two boys had swum really far out, past the buoys, and that one was flailing his arms, his head appearing and disappearing from the surface of the increasingly-turbulent water. His friend looked to be about ten yards away from him, and was treading water steadily, his gaze on the other kid. The girls, still on the sand, were smiling and pointing, but their smiles were rapidly fading.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and peered more closely. "Y?" I asked. "Is he okay?"
"No...He isn't," Y answered, his voice worried.

At the same moment, a lifeguard came tearing into the water. We could tell she was female, and she sprinted through the waves at incredible speed, with remarkable strength, swimming when her feet no longer touched earth. By now, the boy was really falling under, out of view, and his friend was still frozen, useless.

The lifeguard reached the boys, and single-handedly towed the heavier one to the shore with a float, screaming "CALL 911!" as she got closer. For a weird second, nobody did anything. Then I told Y to dial.

911 got the fire department on the phone, and the lifeguard dragged the boy's body onto the sand next to us. I noticed that his face was the color of the water, a blue-ish green that faded at the neck. He was conscious, but lay limp, his eyes rolling around. A crowd had gathered, the beach's emergency services arrived, we were told to hang up with the ones we'd called. They huddled around the boy, gently slapping his cheeks, asking questions.

Y and I backed off and tended to our own kids, who were blissfully unaware of the chaos a few feet away from them. Elan was still hard at work, and Ariel had taken the drop-and-roll to a new level. With a gesture of the chin, we silently agreed to pair off, each of us watching one of the boys, making a barrier between them and the suddenly unfriendly water.

Eventually, paramedics came and decided to carry the kid off the beach on a stretcher. We watched as the lifeguard breathlessly recounted the rescue again and again for the captive audience - I couldn't hear her speak, but the way her arms flew about, I got the gist of it. We went back to playing with the boys, who never noticed a thing, and I toyed with the idea of pointing out the kid on the stretcher to them, to scare them good about the dangers of being reckless in water. I looked at how happy they were, just-four and not-even-two, and decided against it.

As the sun started to set, my family talked about what we'd witnessed, each confessing that we'd thought it looked like the boy was faking it, trying to get attention. We'd watched him defy rational thought, as he doggy-paddled out too far, clearly an amateur swimmer and with too much paunch to pack a lot of endurance. The consensus: He was an idiot.

"And what was the deal with his friend?" Y asked. "He wasn't even trying to save the guy. He wasn't moving! He was, like, two feet away!"

"I know," I said. "I think he was frozen - terrified. And not too smart."

As we were leaving, we passed the lifeguard who'd saved Idiot's life. From far, from the way she'd charged through the lake, she'd appeared Amazonian. Up-close, she proved to be a tiny girl, tanned, blond, with bright aqua eyes. Her T-shirt was drenched, her hair hanging in strings over her shoulders, and her face was still beet-red from the effort. We applauded her, congratulated her rescue. She thanked us, told us in a thick Chicago accent that we were "so cute," and related the story from her own perspective - from the weight and listlessness of his body, she'd thought the boy she was hauling in was dead.

"How old are you?" My mom asked her. "Eighteen?"
"Seventeen." She replied.

Seventeen. Maybe a couple of years older than the boy in the water. Than the girls in the Hollister pants twisting strands of hair nervously next to their crush's oxygen-deprived body. Adrenaline had kicked in, aging the lifeguard immeasurably, taking a child to heroic proportions. The skinny boy, the pointless friend, hadn't the same response.

We'd thought the ocean beaches were dangerous.
But stupid is as stupid does. You can never account for the will of G-d, but when your brain is on the fritz, any situation, any environment, any body of water is an ocean of danger.

I scrubbed Elan and Ariel clean in the bathtub when we got home, looked into their unphased, sleepy eyes, and immediately thought of Idiot's hysterical ones, lying on the sand. I thought of his parents, and how they'd feel when they heard about their kid's brush with death. Would they think it was a fluke? Would they know he'd chosen badly? Would they yell at him, through thankful tears, and call him stupid?

I looked back at my kids, recalling their intelligent, thoughtful play at the beach, and then tilted my face up to the ceiling, issuing a quiet, fervent prayer: Here's hoping they don't grow up stupid.