I work for a builder/roofer. The office is in his house.

When I got to work this afternoon, the house next door had police cars and fire trucks and EMS all over the street. I parked up the block and walked to his house.

It turns out one of the neighbor's visiting grandchildren fell in the pool. The three-year old died. I saw the firefighters treating the grandmother in the backyard. She was hysterical. The father of the kid just looked shell-shocked.

Florida leads the country in drowning deaths for kids. A heck of lot of houses have pools. Kids slip way for a few minutes. Hotel pools don't have lifeguards. Families on vacation with tired parents lose track of the kids.

When visiting Florida as a kid, my parents would dress me in whatever I was wearing for the day and then strap on the big orange life jacket. If I was at the house with a pool I wore that thing. Even to bed. There are pictures of me at the dinner table, asleep, and in the pool, always wearing the orange life jacket. I had an affinity for the water and apparently little fear. More than once I fell in the pool.

For God's sake if you have a kid and are going to be around water, put a life jacket on the kid. Make it a part of the daily attire. That family's life has just changed forever because of a few minutes of inattention.

Leighsah