by Shelby Curtis |

Once upon a time…I had this weird idea in my head that I was lucky. I don’t know why at this particular moment I thought this, as I had never been lucky before. You would think the memories of broken bones, spilt milk at lunch and missing the bus every day in elementary school would have come to mind, but they did not. Hilton Head Island, South Carolina was under a jellyfish alert. They weren’t deadly jellyfish, they just hurt really, really bad if they stung you. How would I know? I weighed the odds in my head and not being good at math, I chose wrong and decided to go boogie boarding in the ocean. My thought process went as follows.

We had been there two days, and only two people in our family had gotten stung. My mom had been lucky, and so had my friends. On the other hand, I knew there were hundreds, maybe thousands of jellyfish waiting to attack me. To make things worse, they did not float on the surface, they were completely submerged under the dark sandy water. After a moment of contemplation, boogie board in hand, I decided to just go for it. Not two minutes in the water, I felt a dull fire on my leg. It was just a tickle at first and then turned into a thin string of burning that wrapped around my ankle. I yelled a few choice words and high-tailed it outta there. One of the lifeguards told me to rub sand on my leg to get the barbs out, which hurt worse than the sting. Then she sprayed straight vinegar on my leg. Surprisingly, that felt good on my bright red ankle. It was my own fault, I blame myself. And the worst part was, I went back in the water twice before the vacation was up.

Luckily, nothing happened to me again, but the guy next to me had a jellyfish go up his pants. No one wanted to see him strip down at the speed of lightning, but what else can you do in that kind of situation?

Moral of the story is, weigh your options carefully, learn from your mistakes the first time, and wear jellyfish proof pants.