Neons - For Standing Out or Saving Lives?

When I was a little girl vacationing at my parents' tiny cottage every summer on Brigantine beach in South Jersey, I was often jealous that my mother dressed my tiny, restless sister (four years younger than me) in the most brightly colored bathing suits she could find. She stretched those beacon one-piece tank suits over her teensy body, and then let her go, happily roaming the shoreline. My mother, perched in a beach chair on a mid-beach dune, ping-ponged her jumbo Jackie O-type sunglasses back and forth, back and forth, continually targeting the glowing little rambler bouncing in the shallow surf, chasing seagulls. I always wondered why she got the brightest bathing suits over me... UNTIL I had a wandering child of my own. You could spot any child a mile away in a neon bathing suit.