The sad but hilarious truth is, this is one of the few stories that is more humiliating if it's true that if it's false. And yet somehow the reverse is also true. Opie is a truly vexing, but captivating entity.
Theater of the mind. This is just like when Opie made up meeting friends roller blading through Central Park his first weekend in the city so he would have something to talk about on the air.
What happened was the French dude dove into the water and landed on Opie because he forgot to move away from the boat after you get in the water. And then Opie swam away imagining doing this but didn't because he's a pussy.
