Adult Rights Require Adult Responsibilities

Growing up, I remember the winters. I remember when the neighborhood lakes and ponds would freeze over. I remember ice skating and playing hockey on the ice. I also knew that we could only go onto the frozen water if the green flag was flying. If we saw a red flag, that meant the ice was still too thin and we could break through it and drown if we ventured onto it.

I also knew that, having seen the red flag, should I nevertheless choose to go onto the ice anyway, whatever happened to me would be my fault. Not the town's fault. Not the mayor's fault. Not the flag guy's fault. Not the weather's fault. Not the ice's fault. Not the fish's fault. Not even my parents' fault. It would be my fault.

I knew this when I was six years old.

Fast forward to today, when American college student Sudiksha Konanki went missing from a luxury resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic earlier this month. While nobody knows for certain what happened, the FBI believes the following occurred:

• In the early hours of March 6, the 20-year-old Konanki and five of her friends had been drinking tequila shots at the resort.
• The resort itself was dealing with a power outage that had entered its 27th hour.
• A little after 4 a.m., the intoxicated Konanki decided the most logical thing to do was to go swimming in the ocean with Joshua Riibe, some dude who she had just met and who was also drunk.
• There was a red flag warning on the beach, indicating to guests not to swim during this time due to strong currents and rough seas. Konanki and Riibe went swimming anyway.
• According to Riibe, the two were swimming in the water when they were struck by a large wave. That was the last time Riibe or anyone else saw Konanki.
• Konanki most likely drowned in the choppy waters.

Let me begin by stating that I hope and pray that Konanki is found alive and well. And if it's the case that she did drown, I pray for her family to pull together and make it through this catastrophic time in their lives. And I pray for Konanki. Drowning is a horrible way to die, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

But if this is what happened, it was entirely avoidable, and only the monumentally stupid decisions that led directly to it made it possible.

Mistake #1: Five college girls getting drunk at a resort in a third-world country after the power has gone out speaks to an unfathomable naïveté or a warped sense of privilege. I'm a guy in relatively good shape (er, depending on who you ask), and even I wouldn't do something that dumb with five of my male friends.

Let me get out the obligatory prefaces. Of course, these girls had the "right" to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and however they wanted. Of course, they're empowered, of course, they don't need permission from the patriarchy, and of course, they don't have to behave like the perfect little princesses we expect them to, blah blah blah. 

And along that same reasoning, of course, I, as a man, have the "right" to strut through Section 8 housing holding hundred dollar bills in my hand screaming, "I'm unarmed! I'm unarmed! Look at all this money! There's even more in my unlocked Bentley!" But I don't do it, even if I have the "right" to do so, even if I'm feeling some serious male "empowerment" on this particular night, even if I want to prove to the world what a big boy grownup I am. 

Why? BECAUSE IT'S A STUPID IDEA THAT COULD GET ME HURT OR KILLED. Whether or not that's how the world should be, it's nevertheless how the world is. It's reality, and I factor reality into my decision-making. That's the bare minimum of what anyone screaming to be respected as an adult should be capable of doing.

Mistake #2: Drunk college guys conversing with drunk college girls at beach resorts are interested in only one thing, and it ain't being a hero and rescuing you from danger. I say this as a guy who rejects the term "toxic masculinity" outright and who gets overly butthurt when it's used to paint broad strokes across all male behavior, much of which isn't anywhere near "toxic."

But in this case? Yes. The guy wanted cheap, no-strings-attached, consequence-free sex. He would have accepted it from any of the six girls present but probably settled on the one willing to talk to him. Such "men" have evolved little from those beta monkeys you see in the animal documentaries, drifting from troop to troop, from rejection to rejection, desperate for any female willing to sully her own gene pool by procreating with such a poor representative of the species.

Now, had these two adults eventually consented to sex, that's their "right." Remember, these are big grownup boys and big grownup girls we're talking about, who know everything about everything, and all of us "Footloose" elders need to show them proper respect. But ladies, don't assume that just because the guy flirting with you at the bar isn't an overt creeper and is willing to play the game for a few hours to get what he wants, this means he'll be your Michael Phelps once the riptide starts pulling you out to sea. He's out for himself and, in a dangerous situation, he's gonna look out for Number One.

Case in point is Riibe, the guy Konanki was swimming with. He's the grownup big boy who could drink and party and lie to girls, and nobody as tough as him was gonna let a red flag tell him he couldn't take a girl swimming. And now the tough guy's daddy flew into the island to bail him out and bring him home, where he will graduate college and live out seven more decades of life. But Konanki is somewhere on the ocean floor, along with the Titan passengers and everyone else who put their trust in a man who thought he was tougher than the ocean.

Would you let your sister meander off on a beach at night with some drunk tool like this? Would you let your daughter? Ok, then why don't have the same amount of respect for yourself? Don't sell yourselves short, ladies. You can do much better.

Mistake #3: If at 4 a.m. when it's pitch black outside during a power outage at the resort in a third-world country and you're drunk and there was a red warning flag posted and you go in the ocean anyway? Sorry, don't know what to tell ya.

The ocean doesn't care that you're such a grownup adult who can drink and do whatever you want, and it certainly doesn't care about your "rights." The ocean will kill you. 

Not everybody sees it this way though. FBI agent Chris Swecker said he could "definitely see a liability issue for the resort" should Konanki's family decide to sue. He added, "Depending on industry standards for a resort like that, where there are enough cameras, whether... people were outside the hotel because of a power outage. Should there have been security on the beach?"

No disrespect to the fine folks at the FBI (Forget Biden's Infractions), but Swecker is wrong. It's not the responsibility of foreign adults to babysit our 20-year-old children. Real adults don't need "security on the beach" or "enough cameras" to prevent them from swimming in the ocean while drunk at 4 a.m. when the red flag is posted. Real adults make that decision on their own.

Whenever a stupid Westerner makes stupid decisions in places like this, the pitiful little third-world island nation practically shuts down, and everyone the government can round up is put to work searching for the hapless moron. The impoverished locals are so desperate to keep tourism afloat that they put monumentally greater efforts and spend vastly more resources towards the safety of our puerile, self-absorbed adults than they do for their own children.

Maybe this is because their own children are, in some respects, more mature than many of our so-called adults. As I said before, I was six years old when I understood that I couldn't go on the ice if the red flag was posted. This wasn't because I was ahead of my time. This is what our parents and our society expected from me and from every other kid in the neighborhood. It wasn't exceptional, it was obvious. And voilá! None of us ever fell through the ice.

Again, I hope they find Konanki alive and well. But if she did drown, it isn't the hotel's fault. It isn't the Dominican government's fault. It isn't the liquor manufacturer's fault. It isn't the ocean's fault. It's Konanki's fault.

Sadly, in today's society, so little maturity and responsibility is expected of our young adults. And it's getting them killed.