A real pain in the ......

 Marina diving can be………..well painful. People are always asking me “what is the worst thing that has happened to you down there,” to which I usually reply, “how’s your stomach?” I have been covered in human blood from an ugly salvage, fractured my skull, ruptured a bursa disk, infected with cellulites, ripped off entire nails, and have had more barnacle cuts, throat infections and ear aches than most people in all of Houston combined. Though there is this one little ‘problem’ I had last summer that I have been reluctant to talk about and far less enthusiastic about sharing with the entire boating population where I live and work. That is where my wife’s struggle to promote a healthy self effacing humor in me has paid off, so here it is.

But first a few things need to be said about marina diving for any of what follows to make sense. In late summer the water is hot. Jacuzzi hot. Ninety at the surface. You run a Diving company, so it is necessary for you to look like a diver even though the conditions call for near naked diving, you must wear a full neoprene dive suit. Color options: Black and mostly black. To protect against barnacle cuts and things getting into your ears you will be wearing gloves and a full head covering hood; they are black too. Then there is the warm air coming down from the compressor, the boots, and not to mention body heat created by the last hour and a half of scrubbing and brushing stubborn thick black algae off heavily covered hull. At this point you are hot. Not uncomfortable or a little warm, you are he kind off hot that gives you a heat blush, and makes your ears pulse and the skin on your face tingle. Getting out of the water is not an option. It is near, at or above 100 degrees. Marinas and boat owners alike generally frown disrobing on the dock for any reason. So once you have begun to get over heated, it is already too late. The only thing to do is find the thermalcline where the water is about 15 degrees cooler, usually at around 7 to 9ft below the surface. This is where my story takes place.

I am happily scrubbing my heart out on a 40’ sloop in the height of summer around 2p.m. and just finishing the job. I am well past the point of what most people consider hot and I need a break before I can tear down the equipment and hike back to the truck.  So in the relative privacy of the deep I decide to go down to the keel, take off my hood and gloves and un-zip my suit to where I can get my arms out and sit Indian style upside down. So here I sit after just getting comfortable and finding a point of balance on the keel. Ah, life ain’t so bad………..         After a minute or so I get an itch. Right in the “insert bong sound” and “insert bowling pins sound” region. Nobody is around so I scratch that itch.  Seconds later the itch is back with Gusto, and I begin a vigorous scratching campaign that should subdue any itch and then waited to see what effect it had had. At about the time my mind poses the essential question, “So Dave, where do you think THAT came from?”  Here comes the pain, and Oh Mother of Fire it was serious.  Since I had chosen to sit Indian style I stretched the neoprene between my legs where by I created a vacuum. The suit being half off as it was provided me the perfect opportunity to experience the unique feeling of a having an Atlantic Medusa Jelly fish attack my @#$%.  Not only had I captured this little sucker in my crotch, but managed the stuff, rub, and cram him into every nook and cranny provided in the above mentioned location.  Still in the grips of a primal response I had at this point removed my suit down to the knees and began flailing about like a wounded idiot, clawing and thrashing. I couldn’t swim because my suit was by this time around my ankles, I couldn’t use my hands as they were inexorably employed at that moment. I fell off the keel and buoyancy did the rest. I’ll skip next section of the story that involved a rather graphic and uncontrollable little dance that I performed as ripped the equipment from the water and sped up the dock like a man chased by demons.

One hour later. The doctor’s office was having a ball with this. All professionalism had gone out the window. (They see me often and know me very well.) I was determined to get in even though they would have been just closing at the time I would arrive. The call went something like this: “I just rubbed a jellyfish into - up - and all around my “@#$%^” and I need help……PLEASE see me, I will pay through the nose.” Response:  “Sir, hang on one second…… (Long pause)...laugh in the distance.” New voice: “(louder laughter.)” Then a longer pause followed ending with an eruption of laughter of several people I could hear quite clearly through her hand cupped over the mouth piece. The first voice comes back with a measured but only half serious tone. “O.k. …um…sir…..we will wait. You just ....hot tail it on over.”

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