Over the summer, I worked as a lifeguard at a local Cincinnati amusement park. The job, while stressful in all ways, taught me many life skills. I learned CPR, how to deal with minor first aid injuries, and the job came with good friends, wonderful employers, and a few life lessons along with the few life skills I have mentioned.

One day I was on rotation for the newest addition to the pool area, a metal playground covered in water (don’t ask me why they thought this was a wonderful idea). While I did my rounds, walking back and forth, checking the blind spots of my zone, there were these two preteen boys who continued to play at the bottom of the catch pool for the slide. Despite my protests and multiple whistle tweets at them, they continued to play there with their goggles.

There was a contraption over the end of the catch pool that held water and then dumped it on the patron as they exited the slide. The boys continuously placed their goggles under the contraption and would ask little girls and boys to please get their goggles for them. As the innocent child did so graciously, the two boys would dump water all over the child.

Again, I repeatedly told them to stop. It was a.) not nice for them to be dumping water on kids who didn’t want to be dumped on, and b.) they just weren’t supposed to be playing in the catch pool. Of course, the preteens being preteens took it upon themselves to play in the catch pool when my back was turned to them.

As I watched this process happen over and over again, I came to a sudden realization on the topic of innocence. The older the children got the less likely they were to get the goggles for the boys because they realized what the boys were doing and able to resist the urge or human nature to help another person out. However, the younger the child was the more willing the were to go get the goggles for the preteen boys.

It made me think. At what point of our life do we become so not trusting? We recognize and understand the world around us as something not to trust as we get older. And what does this teach us about the world we live in? How have we gotten to this point where something as simple as a helpful deed is laced with karma instead of good fortune?

The little kids were only trying to help the other people get their goggles back. They didn’t realize that something terrible was going to be in return of just simply trusting someone. But that’s the world we live in. You can’t trust anyone.

It’s just made me think, and I believe we should all take it as a lesson too. Obviously, we can’t tell our children to just go trusting everyone now-a-days, but maybe we should look at it as a lesson on how our world is now. Why is it like this?

And everyone will have their own suspicion as to why, and everyone will think they know the way to solve it. But I think it should just leaving us thinking, and we should all work together, despite opposing opinions, to fix it.