Consulting my rather battered copy of Dr. Seuss’s Book of Amazing Facts for Inquisitive and Slightly Perverted Youngsters, I discover that jellyfish have sex once a year, but in compensation they experience an orgasm that lasts for 19 minutes. I can relate to part of this experience, but sadly it is the first part.
Anyway, the once a year mating must happen on the same day for all jellyfish (does the earth wobble?), because the Gulf of Thailand is currently full of baby jellyfish; fist-sized lumps of nastiness. I discover this when I go windsurfing this afternoon and find myself sailing through what appears to be a monster clump of sago, but is actually hundreds of jellyfish. It is at this point that I decide that I do not want to fall in to the sea today, and this presents somewhat of a problem.
If you have ever been on, or near, a dive boat and seen some divers floating in the sea after a dive, you will notice they have a benign smile upon their faces. You may think that this is because they are full of joy having experienced the wonders of the deep. The reality is that they have all had their bladders squeezed by diving deep under the water, and when they come to the surface they have an urgent need to pee. So prior to climbing back onto the dive boat, every one takes a little toilet break. Remember that when you hire a wet suit at a dive shop….
Windsurfers don’t have the same excuse, but if nature calls, we just drop off into the water and pretend to be adjusting something important. No more than five minutes into my sailing session this afternoon, I felt nature calling, but there was no way I was going to jump into the jellyfish soup. In addition, if you do get stung, you are advised to have someone urinate over the area of the sting as soon as possible. Call me Mr. Unfriendly, but this is a task I would rather undertake myself, so I wanted to keep some reserve supplies in case the need arose.
In the event, my session only lasted an hour. I keep thinking that windsurfing does not take a lot of effort; but I have been off the water for a week or so due to a lack of wind, photography assignments and playing with this silly blog, and after an hour of rushing around in a sea full of swells at around 40kph, my body and my bladder said enough and I headed for the beach. Great sailing though. Better than sex, but not as good as a 19 minute orgasm. Allegedly.
Comments 🔗
2008-07-09| mart saysDon’t worry grandma, it’s just a typo, should read “The shelf life of a jellyfist”.
2008-07-09| Spike saysDon’t worry grandma, it’s just a typo, should read “jellyfish”. We’ll have no jellyfisting here thank you very much!