Israel has some of the best beaches in the world. I know what I am talking about here. I grew up next to the ocean.
Here, the sand is white and soft. The waves are suitably wavy for the average swimmer. The water is a divine blue green. And it is warm. Nothing like the north Atlantic beaches of my childhood where, even in mid August, you risked major muscle spasms in the arches of your feet if you entered the water too quickly. That searing pain reminded you that it was best to play on the pebbly sand and swim in a lake somewhere else.
Not so here.
Beach season is at least six months long and there are people on the beach even in the middle of the Israeli winter.
Some of those people on the beach are life guards. In typical lifeguard fashion -- or in Bay Watch lifeguard fashion -- the mostly male lifeguard contingent are bronzed and muscular. They sit up in their huts on stilts, flexing their muscles and doing what I guess lifeguards everywhere do -- flirting from up high with the bikini contingent on the ground. Up until this point they are exactly like lifeguards on other beaches I've visited.
But that's where the similarities end. Israeli lifeguards, maybe out of fear of being ignored or not suitably swooned over, like to yell at the swimmers through large megaphones. And not just the odd command -- more like a running dialogue of insults.
"Hey, you, lady in the flowered bathing suit, get away from the flag."
Some women in flowered bathing suits look around to see if it is them that the lifeguard is speaking to.
"No, not you on the left. I'm talking to the short one over there with the fat kid in the red bathing suit. Are you listening to me?"
And while most pay the lifeguards no heed, swimmers do so at their own risk. Not the obvious risk but more of a risk of being harassed via megaphone until you cave to their demands.
"Okay, you don't want to listen to me. That's fine. But don't blame me if you drown." (Sometimes it sounds frighteningly familiar to your grandmother.)
We would listen but after an hour at the beach it starts to wear you down and you automatically start ignoring the insulting blasts. Sometimes when you ignore them for too long they switch to heavily accented English assuming that if you aren't listening then you must be a foreign visitor. It's important to add that they don't get any nicer when they figure you are a visitor.
Of course, I have never noticed them yelling at the people who most deserve it. One time my friend Glenn took his daughters out about 15 meters into the sea on a day that had a lot of red and black flags. His pregnant wife was on the beach trying not to hyperventilate. Where exactly was the lifeguard that day? Probably too busy yelling at some lady in a flowered bathing suit who was standing next to one of his precious flags.
And if you swim out too far, they will yell to you -- one really good blast. But as they have already warned you, if you don't listen, then you are on your own. You want to swim with the sharks, well, then, it's up to you. Heaven knows they have witnesses that they yelled to you -- not one of whom could testify with a clear conscience.
I have no doubt that if you were really in trouble that they would do everything they could to save you, during the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., from May through the end of October. But once you were safe, they would run for the megaphone and give you a piece of their mind.
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