Jellyfish Story

OK, I'm not a fan of fowards. However, this one came to me and 1) I need material for my blog and 2) I have been stung by a number of jelly fish. Once I dove off a rock...did a stroke under water...and my whole face and shoulders went through a number of tentacles whose jellyfish owners were floating on the surface. It felt like I was swimming through a spiderweb and I totally knew what hit me but there was nothing I could do about it at that point. Here is a much worse story:

"Hi Sue, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've beenfeeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I firstmust bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea and I peform underwater repairs on off-shore drilling rigs. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit.

This time of year the water is quite cold. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out ofthe sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is to take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, mybutt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn.

I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony, I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't st ick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate.When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, a long with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive.I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the s urface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.

So, the next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt. Now repeat after me, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."

And, whenever you're having a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?"

Good one huh?