Posted by
Rajjpuut's Folly on Friday, October 30, 2009 3:30:24 PM
Ol’ Rajjpuut just had a hearty laugh and a moment of thoughtful reflection after reading an e-mail from my friend Gail Mason which referred to an e-mail a friend of hers named Sue got from a marine oil rig diver. Like many folk who work on the sea, the diver tells his story using rather salty language. Since the Town Hall website program makes me talk about ex Vice-President “Richard” Cheney and won’t let me call him D-ick, you can imagine that I had to do some editing . . . .
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a real bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling 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 first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. 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 of the sea. It first heats this water to a delightful temperature and 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 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, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it.
This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my rear end started to really burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was already 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 stick 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 my buttcrack. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along 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 surface, 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 take a bowel movement for two days because my anus was swollen shut.So, 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 anus. Now repeat to yourself, ‘I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.’
Whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?
May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day! !!!!
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
P.S. as Gail says, “Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”