A Helping Hand...Or Two

Okay...it's 2am..I have to work out in about 4 hours but I have to write about this for two reasons. Reason #1 is that my friends keep buggin' me about it. Reason #2 is because if I don't I will forget about it.

This past monday I decided to get a little more serious about my bodyboarding. I invested in a board, it's called the Big Braddah and its made for guys like me who are pushin 240. I also got an O'Neill rash guard because my skin was getting tore up.

My friends and I headed down to Makena Beach's third entrance, also known as Big Beach. Big Beach is one of those places on the Southside of Maui where there are almost always waves. It's a skim boarders paradise. On this day there were some decent size waves. There were a few skim boarders and body boarders out and there is this one old caucasian guy snorkeling. Well, the thing about Big Beach is that you can get your ass kicked out there. Not only because of the waves size and power but they also break pretty hard on the shore line.

So this old dude, who I had seen floating out by the rocks finally makes it into the shore. I had just finished catching a wave and see him crawling on the sand toward his wife who is sitting on top of the bank. The waves smash so hard at Big Beach that the water is down a deep slope of sand. You can't even see the shoreline from the top side of the beach. So, I look back and this guy, obviously a tourist is trying to crawl out of the water and up the bank. As he is doing so he gets pummeled by a wave. He looses his fin, which he should have taken off in the water, gets smashed into the sand and pulled 3 yards back toward the ocean. I asked him if he's alright and he nods and doesn't say anything. So I stand there and another wave smacks him down and pulls him 3-5 more yards down th bank. He loses his snorkel and his other fin. His wife is just sitting in the chair above us watching. The third wave comes in, he had decided to come in at the beginning of a huge set, pounds the bejeezus out of him and is taking him out to the ocean like a piece of driftwood. At the same time he is gurgling ocean bubbles. So, I run down the bank, grab one of his arms and start dragging him up the bank which is at least a 70 degree angle. I'm going full speed so the next wave doesn't catch us both. As I'm pulling him up he says, “Not so hard!”. I say, “You're about to die!” He gives me a grunt indicating his slight understanding of this new profound reality we are sharing.

I drag him up to the top where his wife is still sitting in her chair, having watched the whole thing. She tells me his fins are still out there. I was a little bit incredulous at this time and began to understand how Hawaiian's came up with the word “haole”. I retrieve his two fins which wasn't hard because the next wave washed them up. I set them down next to his wifes chair and helped the old guy stand up. My friends and I think he was in his Seventies, Sixties minimum. Well, the guy had gotten so pummeled by the waves that he couldn't stand and went right back to the ground. Meanwhile, another local braddah runs up and asks if everything is okay. The local then asked the old guy if he wanted any help. The old guy was like, “No, leave me alone.” The Hawaiian braddahs son and daughter had been bodyboarding at the same time as me. His son was a cool cat and we actually caught some of the same waves together. I looked at the old guy and understood that he was safe and if he didn't want anymore help then there was no reason for me to hang around.

I head back over to where my friends are, a couple white dudes from Beantown, and pop a Corona. They were like, “Man!...You saved his life.” I thought about it and it was true but it didn't seem like as big a deal as you would think saving someones life would be. So, I just kept on drinking my Corona. They asked me to tell them the whole story so I relayed it. When I got to the part about the guy saying I was pulling him too hard my friends were like, “What an asshole!” Then they asked if he said thank you. I told them no. Then they came to the agreement that if he didn't say thank you before he and his wife left then he was definitely an asshole. So fast forward about 15 minutes after popping my Corona and the old guy and his wife are leaving. His wife walks by first and he is hobbling about 10 feet behind. So he walks up to me and my two white friends and can barely speak because he is stuttering so bad.

He says, “Wh...Whu..Whu..Which one of you saved my life? Who saved my life?” My boys were looking at him like wow he got f—ked up in that ocean. Partially, because he couldn't talk and partially because he didn't know who rescued him when it was me with two white cats. My boys pointed at me and told him that I was the one that saved him. The old guy walks up to me and says, “You. Your'e the one that saved my life?” I didn't answer right away because I was having trouble processing the whole “saved my life thing”. When I hear that expression; I think of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” or the non-fiction reality of Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was just surfing. Also, the guy was so old that I thought he might give me a left hook and say “I wanted to die in Hawaii you bastard! You ruined it!”. Admittedly, my imagination does get to running sometimes. Anyway, I just nodded my head and said “yeah”.

He began to thank me profusely and then told us how it was his last day here, how he was on vacation and how he was from Indianapolis and then he kept talking. It was weird because we really didn't have anything in common. So finally, me and my boys were like, “Alright, well, have a safe flight. Be careful...etc.” We were polite, exchanged pleasantries and he hobbled away. I hadn't noticed but his wife was standing a few feet away. He hobbled toward her and she just started shaking. It looked like she was weeping. Her husband limped over to her and put his arm around her and tried to console her.

After my second beer, I finally put the whole thing together. The old guy was in shock in the water. He didn't know what was happening. He was going to die. The wife was in shock because she was witnessing her husband's death. When I started pulling on his arm it woke him up, like waking up somebody after they have been sleeping or knocked out. The Hawaiian guy ran down because his kids ran up the beach and told him somebody was dying in the ocean. After I left, the wife told the husband the deal. Then after the husband said thank you the wife broke down sobbing because she had almost lost her husband on the last day of their vacation.

Then there was kinda this big deal that I saved someones life, including some good natured ribbing from my friends. Lifeguard Jonas, hey, save my life, blah, blah, blah, you know how friends can be. Because of this and some persuasive persuasion I have chosen to mark this event with a blog entry. I don't really think its a newspaper story so I am not sending it to my usual venue, “The American Chronicle”, which is a mighty fine online newspaper. Plus, since I have retired from the political writing I have to put down something.

How do I feel about the whole lifesaving thing? Well, I kinda feel the same, like Jonas, except when I feel other peoples' energy about it. It wasn't a planned thing. It just happened. Heck, everyone needs a helping hand or two sometimes. I guess you're just lucky if there are hands that can help.