> Brian is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out of Louisiana > and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an > email he sent to his sister. Anytime you think you have had a bad day at > the office, remember this letter......True story. > April 1998 > 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 crap 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 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 is 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 three agonizing in-water > decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface > for my chamber dry decompression. I got to the surface earing nothing but > my brass helmet. My suit and gear were tied to the bell. hen 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 butt when I got into the > chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't crap for two days > because my rectum was swollen shut. 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 it more tolerable. Take > care, and I hope to hear from you soon. > -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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