Life Jackets

Life Jackets

            Throughout life, people outgrow things and change as they get older.  Every single person in the world changes throughout his or her lifetime and I am no exception.  I have outgrown wearing a life jacket while on the water.

            Ever since I remember, my family has been a boating family.  We have always had a boat to live on during the summer and my family would drive to Cedar Point, where we docked our boat, every weekend.  However, there are more safety concerns on the water, especially with little kids, such as myself years ago.  Just like wearing a helmet while on a bike, I was required to wear a life jacket (or life preserver, as some call them) while on the dock or out on the boat.  Along with wearing a life jacket during the summer, I was required to take swimming lessons during the winter to ensure that if I ever would fall into Lake Erie, I would know how to swim to prevent me from drowning.  The strict requirements that my parents placed on me helped when I would fall in.

            When I was around the age of eight or nine, I was with some friends and their parents walking down the dock heading for a day of fun inside of Cedar Point.  However, I delayed this fun by goofing around too much on the dock, losing my balance, and falling in the water.  If I was not wearing my life jacket, I believe that there could have been more devastating if I would not have been wearing my life jacket.  The only injuries I obtained were some scratches in which I received when I was being pulled out of the water.

            Today, I do not need to wear a life jacket while walking down the dock or out on the boat.  I know how to swim fairly well and I have taken more boating education courses so I know the proper form of action in an emergency.  However, there are still some circumstances in which I wear a life jacket; such as water skiing or swimming in Lake Erie.

            If my parents would not have enforced wearing a life jacket all the time and forced me to go to swimming lessons when I was younger, I would be a different person than I am today.