Child drowns at Great America theme park

[mindwalker_i]

On my way to and from the train each morning, I go by the Great America theme park. It has a bunch of roller coasters and a water park, including a wave pool. I've been to wave pools before and they're a lot of fun.

I saw an article in a paper at the train station about a boy drowning in the wave pool, then later at home, found the following article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/13/BAGRNR0KBO3.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

So a mother goes to GA with her 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. The son was in the wave pool without any sort of floation device. He apparently came out for some chips (good, American-boy food) and went back in. When he didn't come back again in 10 minutes, the mother asked her daughter to go find him. According to her, the boy was in the 2-foot part of the pool.

The mother of this child is now blaming GA, saying essentially that they didn't do their job. A quote from her in the above article:

"I want this to be known," Flores, 27, said between sobs. "I want to warn all parents that they need to watch their kids at all times because (Great America) doesn't do their job."

The problem isn't that GA doesn't do their job, it's that they don't do HER job! Who in God's name lets their 4-year-old into a wave pool without a floatation device and at absolute best, the supervision of a 7-year-old? I'm going to take a page from what republicans say (as opposed to what they DO) and say this woman needs to take a big-ass dose of personal responsibility. The two-foot section is still going to get blasted with 4-foot high waves, and how could anybody think that a 4-year-old is going to be ok with that?

This is the kind of person who would leave her kids (the two remaining, 7 and 2) in front of the TV while she goes of and does whatever, then complain that there are things on the TV that are not appropriate for children and that the execs of the station aren't doing their jobs as day care workers for the entire country. Then they'll say the same thing about the internet and how, well somebody, should be looking out for the children. Well I have some news for her: IT'S THE WORLD! There's stuff in the world! And part of being a parent is training her kids to be able to survive in this world, helping them out until their capable of judgement concerning their interactions with said world or at least until they're 18.

</rant>
-mwalker