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April 1998
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother. Last week I had a 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 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 sucks
the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temp. It then pumps
it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air
hose. Now this sounds like a damn 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 ass started to itch. So, of
course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds
my ass 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 ass crack was not as
fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually
grinding the jellyfish into my ass.
I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. 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 decompression stops totaling 35
minutes before I could come to the surface for my dry chamber
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 "up my ass" when I get in the chamber. The cream put the fire out,
but I couldn't crap for two days because my asshole 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 ass. I hope you have no bad days at the office. But if
you do, I hope this will make them more tolerable.
Take care, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Love you,
Tom
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