Read Online Playing the 'Son' Card by Wilson James - Free Book Online

up
staying for all of the three hour public swim.
    After that, it got a little
interesting.
    Jonathan was there, and approached
us near the end of the public swim. He explained that he was going
to run a training session for his staff, from four o’clock until
six, and wondered if we might be interested in staying around to be
‘pretend’ victims for the staff.
    As he explained, “We normally trade
off being victims and rescuers, but it gets a little old and it’s
not all that realistic. If we had you three, and especially because
two of you are smaller sized, it would really help us practice
better.”
    After seeing the smiles on their
faces, I agreed on behalf of the three of us, and we ended up
staying around to help out with the training session.
    Near the end, Jonathan even had me
join with two of his staff members to play the role of guard for a
couple of simulations.
    He told me to just to my best. “Even
though you have no training, you’ve been seeing what we’ve been
doing this afternoon, and you probably have a pretty good idea how
to do a lot of this stuff already, so just do what you can, and
remember to talk to your two partners and work as a
team.”
    So I did, and I guess I did pretty
well, too. I didn’t make any big mistakes, and I actually got to do
pretend CPR on Jesse. I’d been a victim for CPR three times by
then, and I managed to do it as the rescuer quite well, according
to what Jonathan told me afterwards.
    The three of us sat with the group
of staff, and listened as Jonathan gave his crowd the wrap up talk,
and then asked us three to join him in the hot tub to warm
up.
    I know we all needed it by then.
We’d been in and out of the water for almost five hours by then,
and I was really quite cold. I was thinner than Troy and Jesse, and
felt it more than them.
    Jonathan praised me for my hard work
and my quick learning skills. He repeated his desire to have me
‘help out’ around the pool when I moved, and even made a concrete
offer.
    He told me that he wanted me to take
a dive coaching course that would happen over two weekends in about
a month, down in Seattle. He said that I could get there fairly
easily from Spokane so it would be easier than coming all the way
up to Bellingham.
    “Then, when you get here,” Jonathan
went on, “I’d like to bring you on as an official assistant dive
coach, and then you can also do some volunteer guarding and swim
instruction, if you want.”
    I said right away that it sounded
good and I wanted to do it. Once again, this was the new me
talking, the soon-to-be high school freshman, not the lonely little
boy from Spokane.
    After that great session at the
pool, we were feeling pretty happy, but we were also
tired.
    I decided that we needed to stop at
a family restaurant and have a sit-down meal on the way home, to
get supper, instead of going home and me cooking. It felt a little
weird to be in a restaurant, with all of us being just kids. I felt
pretty confident, and it went okay.
    Trevor and Jesse enjoyed the eating
out, we were a little happier when we got home. I suggested that we
watch a movie, but the younger boys both fell asleep within fifteen
minutes of the start.
    I stopped the movie, and looked at
the two of them sleeping. They looked so peaceful that I didn’t
want to disturb them, but I figured I’d better get them upstairs
and into bed.
    I tried to wake them, to get them
upstairs, but I couldn’t budge them. After looking at them some
more, and thinking the situation over, I decided to carry them
upstairs. I tried to remember if they’d been to the bathroom, and
seemed to recall that they’d both been before we left the
restaurant, so that helped.
    I started with Jesse, because he was
lighter, although I knew he weighed about 80 pounds and he was not
a light kid. I managed to get him up the stairs and into his bed
without too much difficulty.
    Next, it was Trevor’s turn. I tried
one more time to wake him, but I could only get a