Yeah, I think it best if you don’t add my username to the list…
Are you joking? I honestly don’t know. With your username, I’d have thought yes.
If I received a condolence card and half of the names listed were puns like “Patty O’Furniture,” it would not occur to me (assuming I wasn’t an SDMB regular, of course) that they were clever message board usernames. I would assume the best and think that the intent was to include a couple of jokes to cheer me up, but I wouldn’t be able to shake the feeling that it was one person (all the names will be in one handwriting, after all, right?) having a laugh at my expense.
(If there was a “jsmith215” thrown in, I’d get it, but I didn’t know if that was the case. And I think explaining on the card that they’re message board names is a good solution.)
I’ve a related question. I once stayed near a beach where the dangers were very similar to the ones mentioned in the warning you posted. I was thrown to the ground by a really small wave (while someone was taking a picture of me and I was facing away from the sea), so I’m not really surprised by the concept of someone being drowned by a three feet wave.
After this incident, when I mentioned it, I was told about the dangers on this beach. Essentially what is written in your warning, except that the person told me about the “every X wave is a sneaker wave” part, apparently untrue according to your warning (of course, it might possibly be true on my French beach and untrue on your American beach but I suspect it’s probably untrue on both).
Now, my question is the following. This person told me that in case I would be caught by one of these currents, I shouldn’t fight it, try to escape it, or to swim towards the beach, because I wouldn’t succeed, would exhaust myself and drown. Instead, I should let the current bring me to some distance of the coast, where the current would end, and then swim parallel to the coast, until I would find a “return” current that would bring me back to the beach without effort. Does any poster have a clue as to whether this was possibly a sound advice or a completely idiotic one?
(As for the OP’s idea, I’m with the posters who find the concept possibly rather creepy, and at least not the slightest bit comforting if I were the one grieving)
The advice that I’ve heard is to immediately begin swimming parallel to the beach. IIRC, rip tides are a localized phenomenon.
If she hadn’t actually died, that would have been hilarious.