 |
| www.suprmchaos.com |
My intention when I started this blog wasn’t merely to recap
all of my catastrophic and near-catastrophic run-ins with nature. My actual point
was to give myself an outlet where I could write honestly about life and the
experiences which shape us and make us who we are. Nuts to that though, I almost
died on Friday and guess whose fault it was? That’s right. Nature. Allow me to
explain.
A little
over a year ago, I wrote about my
complex relationship with the sea. The long and the short of it is that I used
to love the ocean and then I got really weird and awkward as a teenager and decided
that I hated the ocean. Once I put the teenage thing behind me, (never managed to
shake that weird and awkward thing though, what a bummer) I warmed back up to
the sea and we’ve been pals ever since.
As we
discussed in my blog about my harrowing
run-in with a horseshoe crab, my family and I were down the shore last
week. All week long, I frolicked in the sea. I went in a least twice a day,
sometimes going out so far that my feet were nowhere, and I mean nowhere, near
the bottom. I learned this by thrusting myself in an upward manner and then
submerging myself rapidly. Often times it took quite a while before my feet
touched. So yeah, I was out there. Not so far out as to draw the ire of the
lifeguards because I am no rebel. I’m a line-toer if there ever was one.
Anyway,
at dinner on Thursday I noticed I had a splinter in my finger. Never one to
just leave well enough alone, I began picking at it incessantly. Maybe it was
my natural stubbornness coming out, maybe it was the OCD, but I just couldn’t
let the situation stand – or wait until I got back to our shore house and could
access tweezers. I kept picking and picking and then lo and behold I got the splinter
out. Unfortunately, I also managed to pick off a small chunk of skin with it,
leaving me with a very minor war wound. Somehow I managed to resist the urge to
tear my clothing to shreds and instead waited until we returned to the shore
house before I bandaged it.
Flash forward
to the next day. It’s our last full day at the shore. The sun is coming and
going and there’s a decent breeze. The conditions aren't ideal for swimming in the sea and I also had the finger
situation to consider. I wasn’t overly concerned about the salt water irritating
the still-opened wound. What I was really worried about was bacteria. No
offense to my legions of New Jersey readers, but the state has a reputation as
not necessarily being the cleanest place on Earth. I had visions of some
horrible, nightmarish amoeba swimming into my body through the wound and
rotting me from the inside out.
Once
that thought entered my brain, the decision was easy. Even though it was due to
be my last dance with the sea, I elected to stay on dry land. And that choice, without
a shadow of a doubt, saved my life.
As I sat
on the beach, my usual beach-based activities (reading and zoning out), were interrupted
by my mother. “Oh my god!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it!” She was looking
at the beach to the left of the one we’d put down stakes in. I followed her
gaze and saw a large group of lookey-loos standing at the water’s edge. I was
intrigued, but not enough to do anything about it. I zoned out again.
My mom,
the confirmed source of my own stubbornness, persisted in trying to gather the
attention of our whole group, myself included. So she bought out the big guns.
The words no one on a beach can ever hope to ignore. “He caught a shark!”
I
looked back over to the other beach and saw a fisherman standing near the
breakers, struggling with an unseen beast. It was hidden in the water. “Poor
thing,” she said. “I hope they don’t hurt it.” Keep in mind, it was just days
earlier a different female in my life used the words “Poor thing” to describe a fearsome
aquatic menace. I watched as the fisherman struggled to set what I’d been led to believe
was a shark free. He tried to drag it back to its watery home, but
the breakers kept forcing it back to land. So he summoned his courage, much as I
did when facing the horseshow crab, picked the thing up to about shin-level
(not high enough for me to get a good look at it, sadly) and carried it back
into the water. Then he high-tailed it back to land because he was no fool.
The
excitement was over and everyone went back to their beach activities, except
for me. I looked at the tiny bandage on my finger and thought “OCD and stubbornness
have saved me from nature!” The takeaway for people who know me is that I will be
doubling down on both the stubbornness and the OCD from here on out, so you all
have that to look forward to. Also, second takeaway, suck it, nature. You sent a shark to take me out, but I bested you this time.
I
opened my shore odyssey with a quote from Mitch Hedberg, so it’s only proper
that I close it with one from him. After all, no one screams “beach” like Mitch.
“You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They
catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, but they do
want to make it late for something. ‘Where were you?’ ‘I got caught!’ ‘I don't
believe you, let me see the inside of your lip.’” – Mitch Hedberg
No comments:
Post a Comment