Don't assume

Lifeguards, 7-Eleven, and a lemonade stand. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

My wife and daughter and I spent Father’s Day at the beach yesterday. It was a really great time, and I needed it.

But let me ask: Are there are any other former lifeguards on this list?

This was my go-to job during high school and college summers (perhaps to my future dermatologists’ chagrin, although so far I’ve been lucky). And, there are some habits from back then that are hard to break.

For example, whenever I go to the beach now, all these [censored] years later, I’ll catch myself automatically checking out the lifeguards’ setup. (The guards on the Jersey Shore were pretty squared away. Nobody drowned, at least.)

Also, back then, I got certified to teach the Red Cross lifeguard, CPR and first aid classes, so that I could become a captain of the lifeguards—basically, make more money, and not have to sit in a chair all day.

In the classes, they emphasized that a lot of people who died in accidents, or from cardiac arrest, might have survived—except that every bystander assumed that…