The Weaverfish

The day I wrote down the previous piece for my teacher, my family and I went to the beach. At six in the afternoon the sun was low, only a few people were  there and it was great.

Lukie got the floating bed, Dylan had his arm bands on and my wife; always looked sexy in her two piece outfit.

I practiced my free style form while my wife tended our boys. When I got tired and winded, I decided to join them. When I got to where they were, I stepped on something and thought it was a piece of glass. I felt pain on the side of my left big toe. I tried to ignore it for awhile but the pain grew from bad to worse. 

I limped back to shore with much difficulty. Then I sat down the sand and inspected my toe. I found a small puncture. I pinched my toe and let the blood flow out and it felt like there was a piece of small glass inside the wound.

I got a piece of broken shell with a sharp point and started to open the wound with it. It only double my discomfort and found nothing inside.

Thirty minutes had passed and my toe had swelled plus the pain covered the entire toe now and it was shooting up my foot. The was the time I went to look for the life guard.

The life guard who was sweeping the cemented path didn’t know what to do. That made me wonder. . . a life guard could not help me. So I walked away and noticed he did a good job in sweeping. Maybe if I wasn’t breathing when I walked over towards him, he could have helped me.

Forty five minutes and still in pain, my wife told me probably it was a jellyfish. Upon hearing that I remembered Spongebob’s friend Squidward Tentacles who said “there’s nothing to do in Bikini Bottom but get stung by jellyfish.” But it was not a jellyfish.

I told my family to pack up. I went ahead and they followed.  The kids were having the time of their lives but I really need to get home and thought of calling an ambulance.

At home my son Lukie got his encyclopedia of animals. He flipped the pages where the fishes were and started to look for the fish who hurt his father. That melted my heart.

My wife suggested that I’d better go to Ed’s house, a neighbor, and he drove me to the hospital.

In the emergency room the nurse told me there is nothing she could do except soak my foot in hot water. So she got a bucket, I placed my painful foot inside and she poured hot water in it. After awhile the excruciating pain died down and we went home.

My friend Ed laughingly told me that I only had my calluses softened in the hospital.

The next day, while I was at work, I told my colleague Marco what had happened. We started laughing when he told me how he went through what I had experienced. He also told me it was a “pesce ragno” that stung me.

The weaver fish is a small edible fish and it’s correctly called Weevers. In the old days people who got stung cut off their fingers or foot in a desperate attempt to relive them of the pain (Wikipedia).

There was an instant where I thought I might die from the sting. And while I was at the beach cursing, twisting and moaning I remembered my teacher. My teacher who is very ill and in great pain lying on her bed. Who could only utter the words, “is it time?”

Two days ago I called her when I got hold of her number. The man I talked to politely told me that my teacher was resting and could not talk because of her cough. He added that I’d better try the next day and I didn’t.

I don’t have the courage to call her anymore, to talk to her and say “thank you”. I’m afraid I might make things worse for my Ma’m Clarita.

To relieve me from my cowardness, I had done what my teacher had taught me and that is . . . . . to write.

I guess the Weever has taught me a lesson. . . . that life brings us all sorts of pain. And that we learn from our sufferings, we grow from our agony, we endure the wrechedness even though it would mean that we might loose the ones we love.

~ by musashiboogie on August 5, 2009.