Life is Better at the Sea

After being on Perdido Key for a week, enough time has passed for me to become acclimated to the sun, and the sand, the sounds of the sea, and plaintive calls of the sea birds.  The water is warm here, and the people are nice.  The sky is blue, and the breeze off the gulf carries your troubles away.  Perdido Key is indeed a paradise.  As I look across the water of the gulf, the light from the sun hurts my eyes.  I think back to other visits to the gulf, and to the wonderful times we’ve had here.

In early March, the water is warmer here than it has ever been on the Jersey Shore.  That particular thought drags me away.  The Jersey shore is the Jersey Shore.  Some friends of ours found a corner of sanity down at the shore a few years ago.  A place that was as lazy and laid back as the gulf coast.  Landi and Darlene went bar hopping on bicycles once.  Our friends bought a condo on the mainland side of the bay, and it was feet off the water.  You could sit on the front porch and watch the water much like we do here on Perdido Key.

We were visiting once, a couple of years ago down at their condo.  It was a perfect day.  The sky was as blue as it could possibly be.  The sun was bright and warm.  The beach, conviently located maybe 50 feet from their condo, wasn’t crowded or loud.   Joanie and Darlene at some time in the recent past, had made a very wise investment in a Jimmy Buffet Margarita Maker.   We didn’t make margaritas, but we made a hell of a lot of Daiquiris. 

At some point, someone’s cousins’ niece showed up with a friend.  The niece was in her early 20s, as way her friend.  They both worked for a delivery company so they got a lot of exercise every day, and thanks to their string bikinis, it showed.  I was ever so thankful for my sunglasses. 

The nieces enjoyed the daiquiris and the beach.   In all, there were about 7 of us enjoying the beach, and the sun, and the water.  The niece and friend applied suntan lotion to each other, which caused Catfish to stop breathing.

After some time in the sun, one of the nieces decided it was hot, and the two of them dashed down the pier and leaped off the end into the ‘refreshing’ water.  We could hear them squeal, as could everyone else for a mile or two around.  “The water must be really cold out there.”, I thought. 

The nieces both swam quickly back to the beach.  I watched them.  They seemed to be racing.  This is going to be interesting, I thought to myself.    They neared the beach, and began to run through the water.  I was frozen in time.  It was almost like the scene from ‘10’.  I felt dizzy, but thanks to my sunglasses, my gaze never broke from the two shapely young women in string bikinis racing toward me through the serf.  I love the shore.

When at last they reached us,  we learned that when they jumped off the end of the pier, they had actually jumped into a mass of jelly fish, and they had been very badly, and very painfully stung all over their bodies.  You could see the marks where they had been hit.  Read whelps were raising everywhere.  The girls sprinted to the condo and began spraying each other with cold water from the garden hose, and rubbing the affected areas very vigoursly.  Catfish was transfixed. 

As part of your training when you become a Scuba Diving Instructor, you are taught how to deal with injuries common to an aquatic environment, among these, jelly fish stings.  Jelly fish stings are very painful.  When you are stung, tiny pod of ‘toxin’ are stuck to your skin.  First Aid consists of dousing the area with a mild acid, or ammonia, and rinsing with warm salt water, never fresh water.  Fresh water will cause the ‘pod’s to ‘fire’ again, depositing more painful toxin into the victim.

I went to my car, and got the large bottle of vinegar from my first aid kit.

I approached the screaming girls.  I told them I could help relieve the pain, but they would need to do exactly as I instructed them.  Both eagerly agreed.

I explained that to ease the pain, we needed to slowly pour the vinegar on each of them, and that they should smear it around to ensure that all areas were heavily coated with vinegar.    I took the top off of the vinegar, and began slowly pouring it on the chests and shoulders of the nieces.  All sense of modesty was lost as they assisted  each other in smearing the vinegar everywhere.  EVERYWHERE.  At this point, Catfish had not blinked in close to five minutes, and I’m pretty sure I hadn’t taken a breath in close to eight minutes.

As the last of the vinegar was expended, and the girls were much relieved from their pain, I finally breathed again.  I looked at the small crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle.  A big, biker looking guy smiled at me.  He glanced at the girls, and looked back at me.

“Some people would pay good money to do that.”, he said, and he turned and walked away.