One of the things that puzzles me about humanity is the tendency to believe in ridiculous conspiracies or imaginary things such as bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Oswald being a patsy, and that Lady Gaga has talent. When I was a kid, they appealed to me. But age teaches you many things and one was that if it was too ridiculous to be true – it probably wasn’t.
So it is with the theories that a serial killer lurks at the riverside in La Crosse, Wisconsin. For years, drunk kids have been falling in the Mississippi and drowning. Pretty straight forward stuff, but an urban legend has been created that states somebody must be shoving these young, healthy men into the water. Even the FBI has become involved.
Perish the thought that drunks are stupid and do stupid things in their inebriation. No, there has to be some malicious person out there murdering the young idiots. I feel sorry for their friends and family, but come on!
Denial is a part of the grieving process, but I suspect it has more to do with justification of the bar culture than grief in La Crosse. The predominant culture of the town is college age binge drinking that economically fuels the downtown area. Once upon a time, you could find La Crosse in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most bars on one street. While that dubious honor was lost to Eau Claire awhile back, the culture remains.
Partying college students (and others their age) aren’t going to look at the headline about another drowning and suddenly become introspective about their own behaviors. The immature always blame somebody else and so they have created a bogey man out there preying on helpless drunks. Personal responsibility must be avoided at all costs, after all.
The simple and obvious truth is that when someone gets drunk they lose the ability to think clearly. One of the hallmarks is an inability to make good judgments. Another is being unable to walk in a straight line. Combine the two and you have idiots falling into the river. Guess what is also impaired by alcohol? Reflexes and motor skills. You need those two to swim.
There you have the perfect cocktail to accidently end one’s life. All of it is avoidable and makes these deaths senseless tragedies. I would love to say that we’ll never see another one of these drownings, but I don’t think the bar culture in La Crosse is going to change any time soon. Young people aren’t encouraged to grow up in our society, so increased responsibility is unlikely as well.
Instead we’ll be hearing about a serial killer stalking the riverside for years to come. The only killer out there is stupidity.
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