Pool Safety Tips

Summer is drawing to a close, but there are still a few weeks left to make a splash at your local swimming pool. Here's how to make the experience safe and fun:

• Never dive head-first into the shallow end of an empty pool.
• Your body is 70 percent water, so don't worry: Even if you were to drown, only 30 percent of you would die.
• Leave a drowned squirrel floating in the pool as a reminder of what can happen when one isn't careful, and is a squirrel.
• Remember, you can't leave young children unsupervised around the pool, the way you do in the house.
• Don't drink and drive while swimming.
• Important: "Water wings" flotation devices should be placed around a child's arms, never his or her ankles.
• Don't swim in the end of the pool where unscrupulous Japanese commercial whalers are using gill nets and explosive harpoons.
• Don't buy into all that skin-cancer, suntan-lotion, SPF bullshit. It's just a bunch of scientifically verified propaganda from the Coppertone Corporation.
• Do not run around the pool. Unless your cousin is trying to pull down your bathing suit, or the concession stand just opened and you really want a hot dog.
• No daughter of mine is going out in public with a swimsuit like that, if she knows what's good for her.
• Make lots of friends at the pool. That way, if you start drowning, everyone will try to save you. It rules!
• It's a fact: Many drownings take place in only a few feet of water. So you don't even need a pool, really.
• If you're gonna do a cannonball, you gotta yell "Cannonball!" It's tradition.