Bad Day

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 feelingdown lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with youto make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you witha 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 poweredindustrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks thewater out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which istaped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, andI'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 mywhole 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 pumpedit 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 the crack of my butt. 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 poop for two days becausemy butt 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 butt.Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job."Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfishbad day?May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!