Summer is drawing to a close, but there are still a few weeks left to make a splash at your local swimming pool. Here's how to make the experience safe and fun:

Never dive head-first into the shallow end of an empty pool.

Your body is 70 percent water, so don't worry: Even if you were to drown, only 30 percent of you would die.

Leave a drowned squirrel floating in the pool as a reminder of what can happen when one isn't careful, and is a squirrel.

Remember, you can't leave young children unsupervised around the pool, the way you do in the house.

Don't drink and drive while swimming.

Important: "Water wings" flotation devices should be placed around a child's arms, never his or her ankles.

Don't swim in the end of the pool where unscrupulous Japanese commercial whalers are using gill nets and explosive harpoons.

Don't buy into all that skin-cancer, suntan-lotion, SPF bullshit. It's just a bunch of scientifically verified propaganda from the Coppertone Corporation.

Do not run around the pool. Unless your cousin is trying to pull down your bathing suit, or the concession stand just opened and you really want a hot dog.

No daughter of mine is going out in public with a swimsuit like that, if she knows what's good for her.

Make lots of friends at the pool. That way, if you start drowning, everyone will try to save you. It rules!

It's a fact: Many drownings take place in only a few feet of water. So you don't even need a pool, really.

If you're gonna do a cannonball, you gotta yell "Cannonball!" It's tradition.