NFL
By: Mark T. Wilson
Let’s get this out of the way: most people on the internet talk just to talk or see their words on a screen. The dad who jumped in after his daughter fell off a Disney Dreams Cruise Ship is being labeled a bad parent. Well, what about the fact that he risked his life to either save hers or go out with his daughter?
If you’re a parent, you know firsthand that situations happen. Look away for a split second, and a dog has your child in its mouth. Another look away, and he/she is in the middle of the street or drinking some household cleaning supplies. Situations happen.
From reports, no one but the Disney Cruisline and those who witnessed it can actually say what happened. Early speculation was that the family was taking selfies, and the kid fell overboard, and the dad jumped in. Now, reports are saying that the actual situation didn’t happen. Maybe we will find out, and maybe we won’t. But what we do know is that a father saw his daughter fall overboard into the ocean and went after her. Let’s be honest, how many parents are going to do that?
We can sit here on social media and judge this man for taking his eye off the ball, but when faced with a life-or-death choice, he chose death. I say death because we hear the horror stories and the statistics of survival. First off, the kid was extremely lucky she survived the fall alone then lucky she wasn’t sucked under the ship.
Now, imagine seeing your kid fall off a boat in the middle of the ocean and, without hesitation, deciding to risk it all and be a parent. Bad parent or not, in that moment, his sins for being absent-minded were forgiven.
All these TikTok people freeze when their kid curses at them. They freeze when they walk into the room and see a dog playing roughly with the baby. Hell, the way this generation and society are, some parents would have taken their phones out and begun recording, forget jumping into the middle of a non-forgiving ocean to save a loved one. Stop acting like you would have done that.
Whatever happens in life, there will always be those “if that was me” type people floating around a subject. You know the type. “If that was me,” I would have done a super back flip into the ocean to save my child. Or” if that was me,” my daughter would have never been in that situation cause I’m such an awesome parent. You know, those types of people who talk just to hear themselves talk. The type that, when truly faced with danger or a tough decision, would more than likely fold under pressure.
Just imagine this. What if that dad had frozen in the moment? What if he was all talk or truly invested in the social media life and would have rather recorded the incident instead of doing something about it? How much flak would he have received then? So, instead of patting this man on the back for being THAT type of dad, we’re steadily bashing him for a situation.
