Word Prisms

I’ve always thought the happiest times of my life were lived in the moment. I’m fairly self-conscious now and painfully so when I was young. My first, absolute in the moment experience came as a lifeguard. The pool was crowded. The water reflected a summer sun streaming through windows that formed the walls that enclosed the pool. Two lifeguards patrolled the shallow end and one in the deep. About mid-afternoon, I spotted a man in his early twenties cradling a boy in his teens approaching my lifeguard chair. The boy looked dead. By the time the man reached poolside, I had jumped from my chair in order to meet him. “My girlfriend kicked him on the bottom of the pool,” the man said and he indicated the young The swimming pool with all the glass    woman following. That was the last I heard from him because I’d pulled the boy poolside and was attempting artificial respiration. Unfortunately, I met immediate resistance because his air passage was blocked.   So, I flip