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For eliminating diving boards.
Imagine, if you will, it is summertime and a fourteen-year-old boy is having a blast at the neighbor’s pool. He and his friends are taking turns jumping off the diving board. The enthusiastic teenager springs off the board and attempts a suicide dive (a suicide dive involves jumping off a board headfirst with your arms at your sides). Quickly after entering the water, his head smashes into the upslope of the pool and he becomes paralyzed for life. This is the tragedy that happened to Shawn Meneely. His parents were crushed and angrily sued the National Spa & Pool Institute, the diving-board manufacturer, and even the pool builder. Shawn won $6.6 million from the NSPI. Now, thanks to the Meneelys and their lawyers, all backyard-pool diving boards have felt the sting of a painful belly flop.
The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center reports that eight hundred Americans are permanently paralyzed as a result of diving accidents every year. More impressively, about three thousand people drown yearly without any help from diving boards. (Maybe it’s time to outlaw pools too.)
The gainer, jackknife, swan dive, flip, and, of course, the CANNONBALL! Everyone got wet when you did that. Those were the days. Your summers were set if you had a friend with a pool and a board. Now diving boards have nearly vanished because of one clumsy boy and his greedy lawyers. I am all for safety and security, but there is a limit and it has gotten ridiculous. STOP taking the fun out of everything! Shit happens regardless. We don’t live in a white-padded-wall world, although with crazy lawsuits like these diving at our sanity, we may all end up there.
Afterward, Mr. Meneely tried to become an advocate for diving board safety—but really, he just became the poster boy for its eradication. So you still want a diving board? Well, too bad, because you need proper pool sizing. I know what you’re thinking—you will just have a pool built to the proper distance and depth. Well, it turns out, if you build it, they WON’T come. No insurance company will underwrite a diving board. And it doesn’t matter, because builders won’t install one. Thanks for the memories!