Nobody knows who certifies expert swimmers, and every man at the beach believes he qualifies
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
A Phrase Doing Unsupervised Work
LOS ANGELES, CA — As officials warned this week that only expert swimmers should enter the water during the year’s largest swell, a coastal credentialing crisis erupted over a question no agency can answer: who, exactly, certifies an expert swimmer, and why does every man over thirty-five at the beach believe the certification is implied?
The advisory, issued alongside the National Weather Service’s Beach Hazards Statement as seven-to-ten-foot surf hammered Malibu and rip currents combed the coastline, was intended to thin the water of casual swimmers. Instead, lifeguards report, it functioned as a personal invitation to thousands of men who swam competitively in high school for one semester and have been coasting on the credential since the Clinton administration.
‘The phrase expert swimmer is a mirror,’ said Los Angeles County lifeguard captain Rosa Bight. ‘Everyone looks into it and sees themselves. We have pulled out men who described themselves as basically a fish while actively demonstrating otherwise. One gentleman told me he was pool-certified. Sir, this is the Pacific. The pool does not move. The pool does not have opinions about you.’
The Self-Assessment Gap
Researchers have long documented the gulf between perceived and actual swimming ability, with surveys suggesting a majority of American adults overrate their water competence, a phenomenon scientists call aquatic Dunning-Kruger and lifeguards call Saturday. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consistently shows drowning risk concentrated among exactly the demographic most confident at the shoreline, a correlation experts describe as not a coincidence.
The crisis deepened this week when conditions at The Wedge drew bodysurfers into twenty-foot sets while spectators gasped from the berm. Several onlookers, inspired, announced their own expertise and began stretching. Witnesses say the stretching was itself disqualifying.
Proposed Solutions Range From Bad to Litigated
The state has floated several certification frameworks. One proposal would issue laminated Expert Swimmer cards following a practical exam, which insurers killed upon learning the exam would be held in the ocean. Another would adopt a self-declaration system backed by penalties, fining anyone rescued while holding the card, a plan critics noted punishes honesty’s last survivors. A third, favored by lifeguards, simply replaces the phrase expert swimmers only with nobody, with the agency reserving the right to make eye contact with specific individuals.
The United States Lifesaving Association endorsed clearer messaging, observing that the public reliably interprets advisory language in the most flattering available direction. ‘We say experienced, they hear enthusiastic,’ said one official. ‘We say life-threatening, they hear bring the GoPro. Language is doing its best out there. Language is also getting worked.’
The One Genuine Expert Stays Home
In a development local guards describe as completely typical, the region’s most qualified open-water swimmer, a retired rescue veteran with five decades of experience, spent the week on her porch in San Pedro, drinking tea and watching the buoy readings. Asked why she did not exercise her unambiguous credentials, she looked at the reporter for a long moment.
‘Expertise is knowing the difference between can and should,’ she said. ‘I can swim in that. I have swum in worse, at night, towing a grown man who was crying. That is exactly how I know to stay on this porch. The advisory is not a velvet rope, dear. It is not a club. The bouncer is physics, and physics has never once been impressed.’
She added that the swell looked beautiful, that the kids at The Wedge were going to be fine or famous or both, and that she would be available for rescues if it came to that, though it would cost the county a written apology and a new kettle.
Advisory Status
The hazard statement expires Thursday evening, after which the coast returns to its standard ambiguity and the expert swimmer population, by self-report, returns to one hundred percent of beachgoers. Captain Bight has accepted this. ‘Every summer the ocean administers the only exam that counts,’ she said, watching another confident man jog toward the shore break. ‘We just handle the retakes.’
The Card Nobody Can Print
Bureaucratic complications continue to multiply. The Department of Motor Vehicles declined to administer swim credentials on the grounds that it is still processing Real ID. The Coast Guard noted its jurisdiction begins where the swimmers’ judgment ends, which it admitted describes the entire shoreline. Private companies have rushed into the vacuum, with one startup offering Expert Swimmer NFTs that confer no skills but are, the founder stressed, fully transferable, allowing a drowning man to bequeath his expertise mid-rescue.
Lifeguard veterans say the answer has existed all along, free and waterproof: ask the guard in the tower. ‘We will tell you, honestly, in one sentence, whether today is your day,’ Captain Bight said. ‘People will pay ninety dollars for an app and will not walk forty feet to ask a professional sitting in a chair at eye level. The information desk is right there. It is painted blue. It has binoculars.’
As the swell faded into the weekend, the credential debate faded with it, as it does every year, unresolved and unbothered. The only lasting record will live in the rescue logs, the buoy archives, and the memory of one San Pedro porch, where the coast’s most qualified swimmer finished her tea, checked the falling buoy numbers, and allowed herself a single professional nod at an ocean that had, once again, graded on a curve.
More gentle nonsense at https://waterfordwhispersnews.com.
SOURCE: Satirical Journalism