ROBERT GARDNER -- The Verdict

I have mentioned before in these dispatches my career as a lifeguard

on the bayfront and 15th Street, watching over Nancy, Billy, Dorothy and

Peter while the mothers of Nancy, Billy, Dorothy and Peter played endless

rubbers of bridge.

If being a baby sitter is thrilling, I had a thrilling job. However, I

must admit that the career of baby-sitting is not considered as thrilling

as, say, skydiving.

However, the excitement of my job as a lifeguard/baby sitter had to

take second place to my career, also as a lifeguard, keeping track of the

Floater.

The Floater was a rather rotund, middle-aged woman who came down to

the beach each and every day. She would march across the beach, enter the

water, take a half-dozen floundering strokes, then flop over on her back,

stretch out her arms and legs, and float.

She didn’t float just to float. No, sir, my Floater was a traveling

floater. She would get out into the current far enough to pick up the

tide. If it was an incoming tide, she would float up toward the

canneries. If it was an outgoing tide, she would float down toward the

Newport Harbor Yacht Club.

There wasn’t too much thinking involved in baby-sitting, just counting

the babies from time to time to see that no one had drowned or wandered

away, so I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Floater.

Because I was so busy being a baby sitter, I couldn’t leave my post

and follow the lady, but there was a lifeguard at the adjoining

campground, and I asked him about the Floater. He just shrugged and said

that she floated out of his jurisdiction, and he didn’t know exactly

where she landed.

I knew some people at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club and asked them if

the Floater ever landed there. They said she floated right past their

club, and the last thing they saw of her, she was floating under the

White Bridge that led to Bay Island.

I came to no conclusions about the lady and was too bashful to ask her

any questions. After all, there is no law against floating, and she

wasn’t harming anyone.

And so I just kept on counting babies and pulling them out of the

water. I listed every one of those incidents as a rescue and had a record

of rescues never equaled in the history of the Newport Beach lifeguard

service.

Yes, sir, being a lifeguard is an exciting job.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.