OOH…    THAT NAUGHTY  JELLYFISH !

Next time you think you have had a bad day at work, think about this poor guy. Brian is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out of Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. He wrote an e-mail to his sister.

Hi Sue,

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 shit sucks water out of the sea. It heats the water to a delightful temperature. 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 arse started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my arse started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, hut the damage was done. In agony I realised 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 hack. My arse crack was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my arse. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were laughing hysterically. Needless to say, I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make' three agonizing in-water decompression stops totalling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface for my 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 arse' when I get' in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't shit for two days because my arsehole 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 arse. I hope you have no bad days at the office. But if you do, I hope this will make it more tolerable. Take care, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Love, Brian,