Summer Drowning

There are only two seasons in Arizona: Spring and Summer. In other words, the weather here is warm or hot.

Similar to how some American use a groundhog to determine when the winter season ends, I use drowning as indicator of the beginning of summer. Not just any kind of drowning, backyard pool drowning involving children (elementry school age or younger) and their neglectful parents/guardians.

Some of you may think I am insensitive; perhaps my opinion would change if the kid drowned was my own.

Wrong.

You see, I was not just born yesterday. I know the common sense of keeping eyes on the children around water so they don’t drown. Unlike some other Arizonan parents would rather answer phone calls, catching the last few minutes of American Idol or any other crappy television shows, and let their kids play the never ending game of “floatie” (in case you did not know, dead kids sink down to the pool’s bottom first, then float up to the surface).

Perhaps the dead kids are at a better place. They may be in heaven hanging out with other dead relatives; especially when their child molesting uncle/neighbor will be there too. The way I understood about Christianity is that no matter how terrible a person is, as long as this person repents, ask for God/Jesus’ forgiveness, he will be able to enter heaven just like everyone else. I could be wrong, so don’t quote me on this.

Recently I got an email from local television station about doing on camera interview about my website.

I was excited at first, since I have done several radio and newspaper interviews, but never on camera. Then I realized it would be more work that its worth.

A typical local news broadcast is in a 30-minutes slot. Minus 8 minutes of commercials, the actually “news” is left with only 22 minutes. Sports and Weather segments usually take up half of that. The actual informative news would only be 11 minutes or so.

Stories about traffic accidents, increasing gasoline price, crystal-meth bust, state budget, and illegal immigration are always on the top of local news list. One item will always trump that is children drowning. With that kind of competition, the interview about my little website would probably be getting at maximum 2 or 3 minutes of air time.

With Phoenix’s temperature has already reached 90 F (32 C), I wonder how much longer it will be till some kid drowns and Arizona’s summer season officially starts.

Update: April 21, 2006 - 17 year old drowns at Lake Pleasant. This one does not count because he is over the elementry school age.