So I had to write a paper for social psychology, and use it to analyze actions of people. I chose a traumatic event from this past summer. The social psych stuff at the end is boring, but I figure the story part is at least mildly interesting.

I am from Ocean View, Delaware. This is a very small town about a mile off the east coast of the state, our year-round residency is somewhere below one thousand people and our summer (June, July, August, beginning of September) is around five thousand. These people are crammed into around a five mile radius, so there is not a lot of space. The area is also heavily reliant upon tourism, so it is not a close knit community of people. Usually people will come in for one to two weeks and then go back home. Thus, it is more likely that one would not know their neighbors between weeks. Description out of the way, this is a paper about Prosocial Behavior. I will first describe the incident and then use my knowledge of social psychology to examine the failure to act of the surrounding people and contrast this with my reaction.

It is an absolutely gorgeous day out, seventy five degrees, sunny, maybe four clouds in the sky, so my family and I decide to go out on our boat so we can go to lunch across the bay. In the center of my community in Delaware, we have a small pool. It is about twenty five feet long, with a shallower end for small children off to the side, and about five feet deep. In order to get to the dock in our community we have to follow a cobblestone path that cuts between the circle of houses. This path passes adjacent to the pool. My mother, my girlfriend and I leave our house and start to walk by the pool. We make it about thirty feet past the pool when the screaming begins. Being a swimmer and a constant pool frequenter, I assume these screams of “Oh my god!” and little kids freaking out are pretty common. I keep walking, my girlfriend keeps walking. My mother stops to find out what is going on. My girlfriend and I continue walking and we make it around the bend of the path that leads towards the docking area where my father was waiting for us in the boat. We are now around one hundred fifty feet by bird’s flight away from the pool when I hear an elderly woman screaming for a doctor. I pause, look behind me and notice my mother is no longer following us like I had expected her to, look at my girlfriend, tell her to go tell my dad that something is going on and then I immediately start sprinting towards the pool.

I make it to the pool, to find that the fifteen to twenty people that were in the pool could not get the one door to the pool open or they were focused on the event and were completely neglecting those trying to get in. The five people that had come to see what was going on were stuck on the outside, unable to remember the key code to open the door. I stopped at the door, and was immediately asked, “Do you know CPR?” I had a friend in the military who took it upon himself to teach me essential skills. This was one of them. He had given me a forty five minute crash course in CPR on children and adults. I feel like I went into autopilot. The door wasn’t opening so I ran 20 feet to the right, threw my phone at a woman I did not know and commanded her to speak to the 911 operator I had called on the way over(I do not even remember doing this.) I proceeded to vault the fence into the pool to find all of these people, of whom I did not know a single one, standing around doing nothing but gawking, except one man giving terrible CPR to a three year old child who was already starting to turn blue from asphyxiation. I move this man out of the way and begin giving CPR myself. One woman was off in the corner in both knees praying to whatever god would listen, there were people screaming at each other. Most were standing awe-struck at what was going on. The woman whom I had thrown my phone at and I were the only ones actually helping, let alone moving.

I managed to get him to spurt a little bit of water, and he managed to vomit some terrible, terrible fluid into my mouth, but he still was not breathing. I have no idea how long I was giving the boy CPR. Eventually the EMS team I had called showed up and moved me out of the way. I got up, looked around, got my girlfriend’s hand and my mother’s arm and left immediately.
Flash forward about a week, I get a call from the head of the fire department of Ocean View. He thanked me for my show of heroism, told me that the boy survived without any brain damage mostly due to the excellent CPR that he received while he was not breathing. He again thanked me for being the only person to think to call 911 and let them know that we needed assistance. He proceeded to tell me that I, and the older man who had pulled the child out of the pool were being nominated for the Citizen’s hero award and that we would most likely win whenever the banquet occurred. Most of the families who were present for this experience were gone, the chances that I will ever see any of them again are slim, and the next batch of people in the community had no idea what had happened.

If you're interested in the social analysis (some of it is bullshit most of it isn't) I can post the rest of it.

I love social analysis, it is actually entertaining on occasion.

Moving story. I pray I never have to do this for someone, though I am willing. Sounds traumatic, yet gratifying.

ya omega im taking a EMS course right now to become a paramedic and shit goes down! Really scary sometimes too.

Good story. Nicely done (with regard to your actions). Have you turned that paper in yet? If not, lmk and I can help you proof-read it -- there are a few errors that could easily be corrected that MAY help your grade if your prof is a dick.

A great story, I don't think I got the chance to help anyone else apart from my family for a life threatening situation and I most likely won't have the skill set to do so. I did manage to get a CPR card from my Health Science class in 08 but I'm sure it expired by now. CPR for children and adults...used a dummy as a tool (too bad though so many girls in that class o.O)

Its nice to see someone willing to take action as opposed to standing gawking. Its amazing what can happen in this country as people stand around doing nothing. We've all seen in with videos on the net, especially foreign counties. If your teacher gives you anything less than an A he's a communist.