Thread by @AlexandraErin

In 2010, an English woman was hospitalized after a boating accident on the 7 Seas Lagoon in Walt Disney World. She and her husband had rented a two person Sea Raycer, which he was piloting.

The husband, Michael Wormald, took the tiny two person craft directly into the path of the double-decker, 600 person ferryboat that goes between the transportation center and the Magic Kingdom.

He believed the ferry would yield, that it had to yield.

After all, he was a paying customer, wasn't he? And it wasn't like they could just *let* the ferry hit a motorboat not much bigger than a jet ski.

They both survived, but his wife was hospitalized in critical condition, with a collapsed lung and broken bones and vertebrae.

I was in Florida with my mother when this happened and it was all over the news.

I can't find a source on this now but I have a recollection of the husband saying his then-hopsitalized wife had been telling him to turn, turn, turn and he had insisted that the ferry would turn first.

The woman eventually filed suit against Disney for gross negligence for having rented her husband the craft without adequate instruction.

I think there's more than one contributing factor to the near-fatal decision to play chicken with the ferryboat. I think one of them is that thing that happens when a person thinks they know better and someone tries to tell them otherwise.

I think one of them has to do with people who assume rules are for other people, ways for the mighty to make themselves inconvenience the weak, and therefore not something he had to worry about. Whatever the staff or common sense said about right-of-way, he was the customer.

And of course, part of it is the kind of self-absorbed narcissism that would fail to understand that even if the right-of-way came down to "customer has right of way over staff" and not PHYSICS, the staff on the ferry were conducting hundreds of customers.

There was a more recent and even more tragic incident on a different part of the lagoon, involving a dad who decided to let his toddler son splash around in the presence of a "keep out of water" sign.

Same logic: we're customers, it's not that serious, rules are for other people

But that sign was not a behavior rule to be enforced with punishment, it was a safety rule to prevent consequences.

The water was not safe. The water was home to Florida's most famous dangerous wildlife.

Large bodies of water are not a friendly environment for people who think rules are meant to be broken, anyone who tries to tell you what to do is an ignorant busybody, and consequences are something that happens to other people.

Both of those Disney lagoon stories involve a man in a position of responsibility (caring for a child, steering a craft) making a decision that cost someone close to him dearly, in defiance of common sense and obvious safety rules, on the strength of "What're they gonna do?"

These were the stories that popped into my head when I read about the latest Trump... hmm, can we still call it a flotilla if it's not, technically, floating? I think we may be getting into etymologically dicey waters.

But there's a better, closer parallel to the Trump fleet than those other watery disasters, and it's the disaster we've all been living through, barring those who didn't:

The pandemic.

"You can't tell me what to do." + "What are you, a pussy?" + "You play it safe if you want, I'm gonna LIVE!" + ignoring distancing rules established for safety...

And of course, right on queue, we have the buoyancy truthers to call the whole thing a hoax.

https://twitter.com/CarmineSabia/status/1302336384884264962

I suppose anyone who tried to warn against gunning the engines would be a "wakescold"?

So what happened on the lake is funny, but it's not just funny, it's instructive. And also scary.

We're living in a country that's full of people who will sink the boat they're on before they listen to or think of anyone else.

And we outnumber them. But we're in the same boat.

...did not expect this thread to go so far beyond my normal circles, especially given when I made it, but as it is "doing the numbers" I'll just say I'm working on replacing my computer before it dies so if you got something, feel free to give something.

paypal.me/alexandraerin

And also if you mainly want to see more of my commentary on current events I am running a sale on my newsletter The Erin Endeavor all this week, $25 for an annual subscription.

alexandraerin.substack.com/labordabor

And if you read this thread and thought "If she can make good metaphors about boats, I'll bet she writes AMAZING idiosyncratic serial prose about horny elves working through their baggage.", you would be right.

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