A Diving Story[Ed. Note: Sent to me by MacEddie, kht@mactao.demon.nl]
Just as a word of explanation, her friend Brian is a commercial saturation diver
for Global Divers out of Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore
drilling rigs. Below is an e-mail he sent to his sister. Any time you think you
are having a bad day at the office, remember this letter... True story.
----------------------------------------- April, 1998
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day
at the office. 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 wetsuit. 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 machinery sucks the water
out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temp. It then pumps it down to the
diver through a gardenhose 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 I take the hose and stuff it down
the back of my neck. 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 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. This is even
worse than the poison ivy you once had under a cast. Now I had that hose down my
back. I don't have any hair on my back, so the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to
my back. My butt crack was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was
an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my butt. I informed the dive
supervisor of my dilemma over the comms. His instructions were unclear due to
the fact that he along with 5 other divers were laughing hysterically. Needless
to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water
compression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface for my
chamber dry decompression. I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass
helmet. My suit and gear were tied to the bell. When I got on board the medic,
with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told
me to shove it in my butt when I get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out,
but I couldn't poop for two days because my butthole was swollen shut. I later
found out that this could easily have been prevented if the suction hose was
placed on the leeward side of the ship. Anyway, the next time you have a bad day
at the office, think of me. Think about how much worse your day would be if you
were to shove a jellyfish up your butt. I hope you have no bad days at the
office. But if you do, I hope this will make them more tolerable.
-- Joke source unknown.