My Grandfather Was a Hero to Everyone but Me

I thought it was just a game. I had never seen someone dying before.

He was eight years old. I was nine. He was in the pool in my parents’ backyard. His parents were watching him die. They were doing nothing.

I was a few feet away. I was probably traumatized. I am probably traumatized. We have never talked about it since. No one ever talked about it with me. I was really not an important part of the story, I guess. To them.

This kid could not swim. Why his parents decided it was a good idea to allow their kid who could not swim to, you know, go swimming, is beyond me. I mean, they put on his swimming trunks. They watched him walk down the steps of the pool into the water. What was on their minds?

I have so many questions, looking back. How drunk were they? What was going on there? Were my parents swingers or something, was that why all the adults looked so distracted? Just what the hell was going on?

Did they just assume that I, not even an adolescent, would keep an eye on their kid and somehow use my feminine intuition to save his life if need be? Why are parents such idiots when it comes to basic child safety?

Myself and my sister and this boy took several steps towards the deep end of the pool while we chatted about nothing in particular. Then the boy’s arms went up over his head. I thought he was playing at first. Why wouldn’t I think that? We played games like that all the time. We pretended to drown all the time. It was one of our favorite games.

Why would I assume the boy’s parents were just incompetent fools?

My grandfather was faster on the uptake than I was. He grimly stripped off his shirt. He grimly dove into the pool. He grimly saved that boy.

Then on the way out of the pool he yelled at me. At me.

Not at the boy’s parents for, you know, letting their boy who could not swim try to swim anyway. Not at my parents, for not informing their friends that the pool had a steep drop off. Oh no. Somehow it was my fault.

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Because I was the softest thing within reach.

My mother was the only person who thought to check on me. I’m not sure if anybody ever thought to check on my sister.

My mother asked me why I was so upset. I told her flatly that grandpa should not have yelled at me. It was the only time I ever said something like that. My mother, in her complete incompetence at actually protecting me, told me to tell my grandfather how I felt.

Sure, that was fair — a nine year old in conversation with a full sized adult. My grandfather was giant for an adult, over six feet. I was autistic and physically disabled, though I did not have those labels for myself yet.

But sure. Why not?

I have never lacked guts. I told my grandfather how I felt.

He got a trapped look in his eyes. He hedged. Without meeting my eyes, he did apologize.

Then my father wrote an article in the paper about how my grandfather was such a goddam hero for saving a kid who never should have needed to be saved in the first place. At which point I learned all over again that if you are a man and you do one thing right, no one cares how you treat little girls. It was a lesson I never stopped learning in that family.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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