Ambiguous headlines

The other day there was a news story with the headline "Rafter is briefly ‘swallowed’ by whale in Chile, as his father films" and...I don't know if my brain has simply been doing too much lately, but I could not parse these words. I had questions, but I didn't quite have time to delve into the story so I simply said, "Huh," and moved on. 

First of all, I couldn't really understand what a whale was doing swallowing a rafter, or what the rafter was doing in the ocean in the first place. Perhaps—and hear me out—some debris left over from a hurricane. Like, a house got swept out to sea, dashed to bits, and...there are rafters just floating around like well-milled logs.

And, I mean, if I were a whale trying to swallow a rafter, I'd probably only attempt that briefly as well. 

Surely a rafter is a choking hazard. 

Like swallowing a toothpick....or a stick-stick.

Anyway, what I really couldn't figure out was how the father was filming this. 

Shouldn't the father have put the camera down and offered to do the heimlich maneuver or something?

And how did "they" even know the whales were related? Were they tracking the whales? You know how they put, like, tracking devices on whales. Perhaps they've figured out how to put video cameras on whales as well so they can kind of see what the whale sees—in this particular instance his son trying to swallow, like, a beam of sorts? That makes sense. Then the father wouldn't have been able to put down the camera, you know?

Evidently I didn't move on from the story very well. 

Evidently I had to think about this news story the whole day long without ever taking a deeper dive (if you'll pardon the pun) but spinning a whale of a tale (if you'll pardon a second pun).

But then Rachel brought it up in the evening. 

She was like, "Did you see the story about the rafter who was swallowed by a whale?"

And I said, "Wait...wha...hold on...rafter who was swallowed by a whale?!"

Pronouns! They change everything! 

So apparently the rafter was, like, a kayaker (a human (on a raft)...not just a big ol' beam of wood) and the father was a human-father (not a whale-dad) equipped with a camera. 

The whale was always a whale. 

*****

It reminds me of a day earlier this semester when Rachel and I walked into my building on campus and the screens in the lobby welcomed us with an advertisement saying something like:

"RESUME WORKSHOP TODAY @ 3:00 PM"

And I was like, "What workshop are we supposed to resume?"

Rachel sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, "Mom."

"What?" I asked. "Inquiring minds need to know. They've given no information."

Here's the thing, friends: accents—like pronouns—are important.

Résumé workshop—no ambiguity. 

Resumé workshop—no ambiguity.

Resume workshop—so much ambiguity.

We were halfway up the stairs before I realized that it was a résumé workshop. "Oh! Résumé workshop!" I exclaimed aloud.

"You...weren't trying to be funny before?" Rachel asked.

Nope—just confused.

I skate a fine line between hilarity and idiocy—keeps people guessing.

*****

Editing to add a link to last year when I couldn't figure out the date MAR10 and thought the board simply said, "MARIO."