Even in the midst of summer, you’d be surprised just how frigid a pool can become in the late afternoon. I spent many chilly evenings in War Memorial Pool teaching swim lessons, wearing my bold red swimsuit marked “Guard”. After a long and tiresome day up on the chair, mustering the energy and focus to teach a bunch of children to swim was always a challenging task. On the first night of swim lessons, I was approached by a mother with her young son timidly peeking out from behind her legs. She introduced him as Matthew, and then retreated back to her parked car on the far side of the lot. After fifteen minutes of coaxing and small amount of bribery, Matthew finally decided to join me in the water. He held on for dear life to the side of the pool and panic filled his eyes. Before I began to teach him to swim, I was going to need to teach him to do something much harder, to believe in himself and trust in me.…show more content… I taught him how to put his face in the water, breathe out by blowing bubbles, and open his eyes. Each time he opened his eyes underwater, he came up screaming “Great White Shark!”, which made every other kid run out of the pool, giggling and screaming. When we finally left the shallow end to venture deeper he refused to relinquish his tight grip on my hand, even when I offered a Styrofoam noodle in my place. Matthew didn’t trust the noodle but he had begun to trust me. By the end of our session together, he was begging me to let him jump in from the deep