Column Assignment

It's 6:30 on a Friday, twilight is just closing in on the city, and Stacy Pool is closed for the night. However, the water is still bustling with activity. A group of teenagers stand soaking wet and gasping for breath at the side of the pool. They have just completed what many of them will consider the hardest thing they have ever done.

When they first arrived, the tasks seemed simple enough. Nine laps in the pool, diving to retrieve a brick from the deep end, and then treading water for two minutes. It would be an easy test, they thought, and the reward would be great,  becoming a lifeguard for the city of Austin.

Boy, were they wrong.

They pushed off the wall to begin their first lap. The first three laps would be the front crawl, the next the breast stroke, and then the front crawl again to finish up. It was almost too simple, they thought. They were runners, dancers, football players, athletes not easily defeated by a little water.

By the end, they were struggling to keep their strokes looking like a somewhat passable freestyle.

And then there was the brick. Ten pounds and covered with a layer of black rubber, thrown into the deep end of the pool. The students gasped for breath, bent over with exhaustion as their teachers, current lifeguards explained the rules. The challenge was to swim out to it, surface dive to retrieve it, and bring it back. All within a minute and 40 seconds and without wearing goggles.  

At the beginning of the class, their were 30 kids. After the brick, there were 20.

The final labor was treading water. Not herculean necessarily but difficult none the less, especially following the other two tasks. They kicked furiously for two minutes, keeping their arms trapped beneath their armpits.

"Time!" The lifeguard, a tiny blonde girl who can't be much older than them, shouts.

The kids, gulping for air, hoist themselves out of the pool. They've done. They passed.

"Damn," one boy in saggy blue trunks says. "That was damn hard. That might be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."