Eat, Pray, Float: A Humorous Take on Drowning Prevention

[Marcus]

What I found interesting is that the young man clearly knew to wait out the current, which, as Everybody Wang Chung pointed out, is how to get through it:

...So I went on struggling to get him back to the northern bank. It soon became apparent to me, though, that we were unlikely to make it. (If he himself was swimming at all, I was unaware of it and I don’t remember it. He was, to the best of my recollection, essentially dead weight while we were in the river and I was dragging him.)...

DCP continues to misnterpret:

...the current suddenly seemed to go still and I was able to make the final five or ten yards with almost no problem at all. Soon, some of the folks onshore brought one of our boats across and picked us up from the riverbank.

I’ve wondered since, Were we really in danger of drowning?

Lol, no. The young man knew it, others knew it, even his father knew it:

...His father was standing on an eminence on the northern bank, shouting encouragement to us...

If this is true, the father was more likely shouting to Peterson to quit trying to fight the current and wait it out like his son was doing. If so, that's why the boat wasn't immediately dispatched. More experienced people knew where he would end up and picked them up there.

Also, could DCP signal any more clearly that he was hoping someone would get in trouble so he could rescue them?

...There was a young man from our group who was treading water not far from me, and I checked on him from time to time out of the corner of my eye...

He was waiting for something to happen. A person with better character would have shouted a warning rather than hoping a kid got in danger because he wanted to flex his heroic aquaticism.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

He was waiting for something to happen. A person with better character would have shouted a warning rather than hoping a kid got in danger because he wanted to flex his heroic aquaticism.

Excellent point. In his fiction he didn’t realize he’d look like a narcissist who risked someone’s life, and his own, because he loved being a manatee. What a transparent dork.

- Doc

[I Have Questions]

Why would you, completely unprompted, relate that anecdote about yourself on a public blog? Who does that?

[Marcus]

in his own words,

DanielPeterson Mod
3 hours ago edited
As I say, it didn't feel, and I don't regard it, as heroic. I didn't post the story to brag. I'm quietly happy that (I think) I probably saved his life, but I'm not holding myself up as especially courageous. (That was kinda sorta the point of the post, donchaknow?)

And there's no reason for them to think of me as "the Gringo." Contrary to the derisive misreading over on the Peterson Obsession Board -- is that where you picked it up? -- the young man wasn't a Guatemalan but a "Gringo" like myself. That's why his parents were at that open air public event back in the United States. We didn't bring them back with us as souvenirs.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 6744159604

Bolding added to note: Yes, he did.

And wow, he must have hustled over here immediately! My guess is he's trying to drum up interest in his blog again.

[I Have Questions]

in his own words,

DanielPeterson Mod
3 hours ago edited
As I say, it didn't feel, and I don't regard it, as heroic. I didn't post the story to brag. I'm quietly happy that (I think) I probably saved his life, but I'm not holding myself up as especially courageous. (That was kinda sorta the point of the post, donchaknow?)

And there's no reason for them to think of me as "the Gringo." Contrary to the derisive misreading over on the Peterson Obsession Board -- is that where you picked it up? -- the young man wasn't a Guatemalan but a "Gringo" like myself. That's why his parents were at that open air public event back in the United States. We didn't bring them back with us as souvenirs.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 6744159604

Bolding added to note: Yes, he did.

And wow, he must have hustled over here immediately! My guess is he's trying to drum up interest in his blog again.

It’s one big humble-brag from start to finish.

[Doctor Scratch]

There are basically two versions of him that appear in these stories. One version is this sort of hapless, meek person who manages (over and over again!) to stumble into these acts of heroics or victory, and who is amazed--shocked, I tell you!--every time it happens. This current story would fall into this category, along with the one where he defeated his classmate in the Senior Class President election, and the one where the judge wiped away his traffic violation because he was LDS.

Meanwhile, there is another version of the Afore who is a learned, accomplished, genius-level prodigy who was reading Kant and Marx at the age of 12, and who regularly rubs elbows with the likes of Milton Friedman, Jorge Luis Borges, and William F. Buckley, Jr. This version utterly mopped the floor with belligerent Christian preachers during his mission and tends to get ponderous and appropriately pious at the mention of "hallowed" academic spaces like Oxford, Harvard, and Princeton.

You sort of have to wonder if one version was invented to help clean up the "excesses" of the other.

[Tom]

I’m glad that no lives were lost that day. The 620-mile Río Usumacinta (River of the Sacred Monkey or the River Sidon in the Book of Mormon) is not a body of water to trifle with. Even an individual who lettered in swimming in high school more than twenty years ago should always wear a life jacket while swimming in the river and should run through several other options before attempting to swim someone to safety. Water rescues are dangerous for even trained individuals. I recall that a woman named Carmen May tragically drowned in the Usumacinta in 1933 while providing support to the Penn Museum’s excavations at Piedras Negras. May performed laundry services and other unheralded work for the excavation team.

[Gadianton]

alluded to my involvement and wondered whether the parents of the young man had rewarded me in any way. They were very wealthy, and they were standing nearby.

Thanks Doctor Scratch for bringing this passage to my attention. I didn't read the article except to confirm the association with the dark powers that the adversary holds over the waters.

My response to the quote: Of course the person he saved had money! Why would he save somebody of no significance? As you point out, the Afore has quite a high intellect, and that intellect ensures that every word chosen or pious act disclosed is a matter of careful calculation.

I suppose I wonder why he didn't just use his surrogate powers and have the water move the victim to shore?

----

Morley, a special thanks to you for finding that reference. I knew it was doctrine; as a Chapel Mormon I know what is and what isn't doctrine, but my searches only led me to FAIR, LDS Living, and these kinds of sites that lie by omitting relevant information.

[sock puppet]

* * * the Afore has quite a high intellect, and that intellect ensures that every word chosen or pious act disclosed is a matter of careful calculation.

Yet we have witnessed the Afore, on occasion, to act irrationally despite his high intellect.

[Rivendale]

* * * the Afore has quite a high intellect, and that intellect ensures that every word chosen or pious act disclosed is a matter of careful calculation.

Yet we have witnessed the Afore, on occasion, to act irrationally despite his high intellect.

I am still baffled by his Mormon stories interview where he talked about dowsing and the efficacy of it. It does however explain why he has no problem with seer stones, angels, remote viewing and communication with a reanimated supreme primate.