Think before you sink...

Fear is the biggest factor, she said, particularly for children who have never swum before. The teachers say it takes a lot of patience and coaxing, but the results are worth it. Even if the children do not become expert swimmers, they leave with basic survival skills and are comfortable in the water.

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Madison opened an outdoor aquatic center (pool, slides, fountains) this summer after years of pushing to get one built and significant private donations. Good for them. Lots of folks bitched -- why spend my tax money maintaining such a public facility which I would never use? ... and call it a damn swimming pool already!

We have lakes and several city beaches here, but the storm sewers all drain directly into them. Hence, about this time of the year, the phosphorus from fertilizers and yard waste stoke the milfoil and other weeds. Plus, bacteria levels from goose poop will be closing many soon, if past years are any guide. Lake Wingra is a smaller lake -- feels like a bathtub temperature-wise, and micro-organisms love that.

So a public pool for kids to learn to become comfortable in the water -- did you know Wisconsin has more lakes than even our neighbor Minnesota, which brags to be Land of 10,000 lakes? To me, you have to teach all children to swim, even if you don't yourself. Double drownings -- one person going in after the other -- are all too common.

(Lots of people don't like to think things through -- visualize deaths. I had the chance to listen once, to a man whose brother drowned as a child. Like most, he went in after him trying to help. When someone is going under and needs air to survive, the instinct is to grab any solid item that comes nearby. This surviving brother, with help, understood his drowning brother was not trying to kill him. That instinct, to grab onto anything and push down to elevate yourself to get air and survive, explains why so many drown in pairs. One gets in trouble, the other goes in to help, and neither makes it out alive.)

Teach your kids to swim. Tell them to love and look out for their brother. But teach them more effective ways to get help. "Reach or throw, don't go." Please do everything you can within your powers, parents, never to allow your kids to get into that situation -- find those public pools and hide your own fears, if necessary, so they relax enough to float, and build their skills from there once comfortable in the water.

And those Waterwings? Get rid of them now. It's not like training wheels on a bike or a protective bike helmet even, as some parents try to justify. It's a crutch that some kids don't get over, and some believe to be a magical cape protecting them from going in depths they wouldn't dare without. "In over their heads" Let your children experience deep water without any special protection, except you right there beside them -- and teach them to respect the water, currents in rivers and streams. Talk to them about water safety. Once a child can float unassisted -- and remind them since you float at the surface, it doesn't matter whether it's in 10 inches or 10 feet -- and then glide, kick and paddle, you have succeeded in helping drownproof them.

I hope your sons and daughters never have to experience what that surviving brother did. I think this new pool in Madison, and other efforts through school p.e. classes, can go a long way in helping to be part of the solution.