Posted 5/28/2006 05:50:00 PM by Douglas

Thank you, state of Texas, for protecting us from the most menacing force that threatens to kill you and everyone you care about. I'm talking about, of course, the high dive.

But not this summer. When the pool opens Memorial Day weekend, the Cottonwood high dive won’t be there. The reason: Section L of Chapter 265 of the Texas Administrative Code, which prescribes clearances for diving boards, depths of water, and slopes of pool bottoms as they rise from deep end to shallow. The new rules became effective in September 2004. To oversimplify, they call, respectively, for greater, deeper, and gentler. Many municipalities gave their noncomplying pools a reprieve last season. But this summer, no exceptions.

I hoped the link was to The Onion, but alas, this appears to be legit. And how sad. The high dive is such a rite of passage. That's where the "big kids" played. To ignore the hierarchy of the pool and try to jump off the high dive prematurely would ultimately result in mere embarrassment, but you were sure it meant death. I guess that's why the first time I tried it, I went over with a life jacket. But I digress. Who is responsible for this madness?

Cast in the role of natatorial killjoy in this sad story is Katie Moore, a registered sanitarian with the Texas Department of State Health Services, the agency responsible for the new rules. While others worry about hang time and water displacement, Moore worries about broken necks—or the potentiality of a broken neck. Or, presumably, in the case of the cannonball, even a contused butt cheek.

“I sympathize,” she says. “I know diving boards are a lot of fun. But why wait until someone is injured?” Moore says “there are studies all over the place” proving that diving boards put swimmers in peril.

Preemption scores another victory. Sure they're fun, but what if? What if?!? DWI laws paved the way for this mindset, and now it's mainstream. Get ready for more of this. Crazy parent that blows everything out of proportion by comparing everything you don't like to the Nazis, drive it home for us:

“To me, it’s such a safety Nazi type of thing,” John Lanius says. “You can’t even find a merry-go-round anymore. We’re protecting our kids out of childhood.”

Yeah, what he said. I'm sure that was the first complaint made by the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto: No Diving.