My worst fear all started with a trip to the beach. A trip to one of the safest beaches on the east coast ended with a little girl scared for life.
We dropped my oldest brother off at Virginia Commonwealth University and since Richmond was only an hour away from the beach my Dad decided to extend our trip by a day. We left Richmond and drove to Virginia Beach that afternoon. We stayed in a little hotel right on the beach and being eight I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. We check into the hotel and went to our room. Our room was on the beach level and had French doors that opened right on to the sand. The view was incredible! We had our own shower outside and a little blue and white umbrella to take to the beach. I was so excited, I loved going to the beach and swimming in the ocean.
We all changed and ran out the French doors on to the white sand and into the ocean. My sister and I were having so much fun swimming, playing and being thrown by the waves. We were in our own little world. My Mom and Dad were watching us on the shoreline and my Dad had just gotten up to come tell us it was time to go and eat dinner, when it happened.
I can remember this like it happened yesterday. I was swimming back to my Dad and felt a dozen ice-cold strings of spaghetti noodles come out of no where and rap around my left leg. I didn’t know what it was. I immediately let out a scream of bloody murder. My Dad came running out into the dark blue murky water to help me, only to find an enormous jellyfish rapped around my leg. He pulled me out of the water and on to the beach dragging my bloody legs in the sand. I lay crying in throbbing pain on the sand as my Dad and a lifeguard tried to pull the jellyfish from around my leg. I remember looking down and seeing the milky white jellyfish quivering as it tried to hold on to my leg as they severed its tentacles. They were trying so hard but they could only go so fast. Every time they touched the jellyfish, the poison from the tentacles would sting their hands and they began to swell along with my leg. After about seven or eight minutes of pulling at and cutting the jellyfish, it finally started to give up and let go of my leg.
The Essay on Native Americans Creation Legend
I Shamans A. definition B. purpose 1. balance 2. success hunting 3. planting 4. cure sickness C. Usually males 1.post menopausal women 2. blood powers II passed down from generation to generation A. usually from memory 1. sand drawings 2. birch bark scrolls 3. paintings on rocks 4. animal hides B.children 1. eight-familiar stories 2. ten- know history III answer basic questions A. where do we come ...
By the time my Dad and the lifeguard had gotten most of the forty feet of tentacles off of my leg the paramedics had arrived. They pored hot sterile water over my leg to wash off the bloody sand and the tentacles that remained. That was about the only thing they could do, the hot water had removed the rest tentacles and I did not need stitches. They gave me meat tenderizer and told me to put that on the wounds and they would heal in the next couple of days.
I did not get back in the ocean that day, and it took me six years to even get near the ocean again. The first time I got back in the water I only got in to my knees. To this day, if something touches me in the water I run as fast as I can and get back on dry land. I will never completely get over my fear of the ocean and jellyfish. I am however, slowly getting in the water deeper and deeper.
