Summer is approaching, and this week’s ‘Dudes’ is awash with seasonal shenanigans. Read on for stories about ‘kind of stupid’ guys getting wet.
In psychological terms, water can be seen to represent emotion. In mythological terms, it can symbolize the source of a journey, as in Homer’s The Odyssey.
Here in the real world, however, water seems to be yet one more element in which the male of the species manages to employ his God-given talent for folly.
“A Pole on holiday in Germany jumped from a ship into a chilly lake to prove his love to his wife, but instead lost his trousers, his wallet, and ended up being fined, police said Thursday.”
If this sounds to you like the setup of a brilliant—if old-school—joke, you are not alone. Alas, it is merely the poorly written lead of a May 5 report carried by the AFP newswire (“A World of Difference”).
The unnamed 29-year-old man leapt from the deck of a “tourist ship” into the 59-degree waters of the charmingly named Lake Moehne, which is located in the hyphenate western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (population roughly 18 million).
He was rescued, niezaleznie od pants and billfold, by firefighters summoned to the scene. In an act of bureaucratic churlishness, the fire department later fined him, the AFP reported, “for wasting its time.”
Why on earth would a man, Polish or not, jump into a really cold lake from a “tourist ship”? To us, “tourist ship” suggests a vessel outfitted with an upper-deck swimming pool next to which one can dance the Macarena for hours on end with colossally hammered fellow passengers.
As it happened, the man said he jumped because he wanted “to prove his love to his wife,” according to quaintly named police spokesman Winfried Schnieders.
The wife, Mr. Schnieders added, “was not amused.”
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Police in Rensselaer, New York (pop. 7,851) were not amused when a man jumped into the Hudson River after they pulled over a car he was riding in.
The Associated Press reported May 5 that the 21-year-old man leapt into the water “near a bridge.” That the bridge, like the man, went unnamed shows an alarming lack of specificity on the AP’s part.
The Hudson current carried the man 250 feet (approximately something-something of a mile), until he was able to grab a branch to arrest his progress.
Did the man leap into the waterway to impress a wife or anyone else? He did not. He did it because he thought there existed a warrant for his arrest. Like all potential or real criminals, he didn’t want to get t’rown in da clink.
Happily for him, no warrant existed. Sadly for him, he was taken, according to the AP, “to an Albany hospital for an examination.”
Displaying a troubling reportorial lethargy, the AP did not detail what the examination entailed. Therefore, we shall never know whether it was psychiatric in nature or, in a worst-case scenario, for example, rectal.
Incidentally, the waters of the mighty Hudson were but 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That means the New York man was a good deal colder than the Polish lake jumper. We believe, therefore, that he should be awarded some sort of trophy, or at least medal of commendation.
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There seems to be something of an epidemic of water-loggeed young men of late.
An unnamed teenage swimmer was pulled—unharmed, thank Neptune—from a tidal current at a beach in Pensacola, Fla. (pop 53,752), according to a May 8 report in the Pensacola News-Journal (“A Gannett Company”).
And the AP reported April 28 that Kyle Hughes, 21, of Wallingford, Vermont (pop 2,274) was rescued as he clung to a rock at the entrancingly named Dog’s Head Falls in the flooded Lamoille River, in Johnston, Vt. (pop 1,430).
Too bad those men didn’t have the luck and resourcefulness of an Alaskan named Michael Poland (no relation to the lake jumper in Germany, who hails from Poland).
On April 29, Mr. Poland, 18, of Fairbanks (pop. 35,252), decided, along with his pals, to leap about on large ice floes massed in the Chena River, according a May 1 piece in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (“The Voice of Interior Alaska Since 1903”).
Evidently, this is the sort of thing young men do for fun in Fairbanks, where winters last for three years at a time and temperatures can drop into the low minus-700s. At least that’s what we gather here, sitting in our heated California apartment and doing absolutely no Alaska weather-related research at all.
As the young men hippity-hopped across the ice, a 10-foot by 15-foot chunk, which Mr. Poland stood upon, broke free. It floated, the Daily News-Miner reported, “under the Wendell Street Bridge.”
(As you can see, the Daily News-Miner was able to name the Fairbanks bridge. As you likely remember, the AP was unable to name the New York bridge. No wonder citizens have lost faith in large international newsgathering organizations and now turn for updates on the day’s events to Twitter and American Idol.)
Mr. Poland’s ingenious friends tossed him a milk crate to sit on and a cooler-top to paddle with. He appeared to enjoy a pleasant trip, even chatting nonchalantly on his cell phone.
Nonetheless, startled onlookers dialed 911. Emergency responders raced to the scene and “rescued” Mr. Poland. Police promptly handcuffed and carted him off to jail, where he spent the night.
Subsequently he was sentenced to 10 days in prison with all 10 days suspended. Showing humility beyond his years, he told police that what he did was “kind of stupid.”
Fairbanks is a libertarian type of place, so not everyone was delighted the police response. This comes especially clear in comments left at the end of the relevant post on the Daily News-Miner website.
A person, screen-named “nixin,” wrote, “I guess this is another example of why the general public no longer trusts the police. They are no longer here to protect and serve, only to harass and intimidate.”
“TeaPartyPatriot” agreed, noting, “The [Fairbanks Police Department] told the young man that he would not be arrested then they arrested him. They cannot be trusted. I heard the whole story today on KFAR.”
Summing it up best, “agamemnon” added, “Really, what is the difference if you take your own life in your hands and get stranded on Denali, get rescued by the ‘authorities’ and do not even have to pay for it? Reason: There is a huge commercial interest in climbing in the park.”
This last is a non sequitur of psychedelic proportions, and may be a symptom of much larger issues. As “agememnon” concluded, in a statement that could be as much about Fairbankian political paranoia as about the general state of things, “We are in cultural decline … these are symptoms of much larger issues.”
Indeed, we are a culture adrift, smacking into the flotsam and jetsam of unnamed bridges, humorless emergency response teams, and muddled potential criminals.
In light of this, it is reassuring that young men continue to jump into lakes and ride ice floes down rivers for no reason at all, as brave in their pursuit of life’s odyssey as they are imprudent in their means of pursuing it.
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Dave Ford is a San Francisco writer whose work has appeared in Spin, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, SF Weekly, The Advocate, and a host of other periodicals. He writes the blog First of All, and is a certified yoga instructor who teaches at various venues in his home city.
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Illustration by Bion Harrigan. Bion Harrigan keeps his head firmly planted in the clouds and has done so since the earliest days of a youth misspent idly daydreaming, reading Mad magazine, and drawing scary monsters and super creeps. He continues to spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming and drawing at his home in Maplewood, New Jersey.
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Other dudes, who, previously, have been “in the news”: