PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I watched a lifeguard quickly and efficiently scoop a drowning boy of our local public pool today. This pool has excellent, well-trained life guards. But not all pools do, and even excellent life guards can miss things. The kid was with a county camp group, and clearly shouldn’t have been in deep water. I know this pool gives the camp kids a swim test and then tells them where they are allowed to go, but no one is really watching them, given maybe 2 or 3 counselors and 18 or so kids. In short, if your kid doesn’t know how to swim, don’t let him go on a day camp trip to a public pool that has water over his head. And btw, this wasn’t the first camp kid I’ve seen fished out of the deep (i.e., 3.5 feet) water by a lifeguard over the years.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I post this every summer, but one more time: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning. “Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.”