As the academic year winds down and summer stretches before us, as a public service, I present you with a few seasonal safety tips:
Keep rescue equipment within easy reach of pools and hot tubs. If you do, any drownings that happen to occur will be more readily ruled "accidental."
Perfumes, lotions and hair products attract disease-carrying insects, so avoid using them. Your social life may suffer, but if they were truly your friends they wouldn't mind a little filth.
Be careful to store lawn chemicals and insecticides properly and out of reach of children. Pesticides and I have something in common in that neither of us draws a distinction between your children and common vermin.
The sun is at its peak intensity from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; mosquitoes are at their peak activity at dawn and dusk. To minimize the risks, send children out to play around bar time.
If you undercook burgers at backyard barbecues, you risk exposure to a plethora of intestinal parasites. If you overcook them, you risk exposure to charcoal carcinogens. Play it safe and serve SPAM.
Observe proper safety procedures when boating. Everyone should wear life jackets, even adults. You don't want impressionable youth to get the wrong idea when they watch you sucking down Jell-O shots, motoring recklessly into flocks of reposing waterfowl and urinating off the side of your vessel with such flagrant disregard for safety.
If you have an elderly neighbor who does not tolerate the heat well, check in periodically and reassure them that relief will come soon, in the form of cooler autumn temperatures or the frigid embrace of Death, whichever comes first.
Playgrounds can be dangerous places. Test metal slides with the family pet to avoid burns. Also, you would be best advised to stop licking the arsenic-treated wood–it really doesn't taste noticeably better than ordinary wood, trust me.
Home trampolines are nothing but harbingers of spinal trauma and should not be used by anyone, especially children. If they protest, tell them Jesus doesn't love children who jump on trampolines. Neither do Santa and the Easter Bunny.
Babies should be kept out of the sun, protected in the shade of a canopy, umbrella or drainage culvert. Never leave your baby in a parked car, for temperatures within can quickly rise to lethality. Take the baby out and lay it in the nice shady spot behind a rear wheel of your vehicle.
To avoid dehydration and overheating, hook yourself up to a saline IV during outdoor physical activity. Also, it might be a good idea to save your vinyl cat suits for nocturnal or air conditioned engagements.
When selecting a summer camp or babysitter, do your research–all those defrocked priests have to go somewhere. Also, if the camp you're considering has a supposed "Indian name," be sure to say it out loud before committing–you might change your mind about "Camp Ni-Kee-Swetsh-Op."
Finally, though summer is the perfect time to enjoy a refreshing glass of lemonade from the gap-toothed young entrepreneur down the block, don't ingest anything that little punk pours you before testing it with those handy new drug-detecting strips.
Holly Noe's column will return in the fall. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you actually follow her advice, she looks forward to hearing about your summer break in the court reports.