Kapiolani Community College
Diamond Journal 2004

The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Funny
Leo Martinez

“The world is your oyster,” my grandmother used to say to me as a kid. “And don’t you let anybody convince you of any different; or when I die, I’ll come back and pull your legs at night for being such a sucker.” Mexican grandmothers have a way of scaring the crap out of you as a kid if they want to instill something in you.

“ I won’t Grandma, I promise,” I used to always say.
I loved my grandmother; but I didn’t want her coming back and pulling my legs at night. So as far as I can remember, I made a made a point of living my life as an adventure.

By the time I was fifteen years old, I was a daring and courageous little guy, quick with a smile and eager to rip the fun out of life in my little hometown of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where beer was cheaper than bottled water, home remedies ware more effective than a trip to the doctors, and a squirt could drive a car as long as he was big enough to reach the pedals and still see over the steering wheel. There was never any shortage of opportunities.

Tim, a tall, lanky and perpetually smiling good friend of the family from California, asked me if I’d be interested on going on a four day long surf trip where he would supply the wheels and pay for both our lodging if I would act as a translator and guide. I don’t think he had finished talking when I was already telling him about all the places we could go and how great it was going to be. Judging from the huge smile on his face, my reply was like music to his ears.

Tim literally lived to surf. At thirty-seven, the man had been married twice and twice divorced because his wives had gotten fed up with him putting surfing before them. Surfing was so engulfing a thing with this guy that he actually had planed to have carved on his tombstone, “ Tim Newbern: Surfer.”

Taking advantage of my lack of responsibilities in the summer and without too much planning, we scrounged together our surfboards, a couple of t-shirts, and our toothbrushes, along with some other essentials. Next morning we loaded up Tim’s white Volkswagon beetle, and armed with some potato chips and a couple of other snacks, we made for the road.

We drove north for about three hours to a spot called “Platanitos,” which in Spanish means little bananas, so named because it was in front of this big banana plantation that guys always snuck into for a quick meal after surfing.

The waves were beautiful when we got there; a little over head-high and glossy smooth, the way you think of a glass sculpture being glossy smooth.

It’s a funny thing when obsessive surfers like Tim and I get to a spot and it’s breaking good. We could have been taking our sweet time all the way there, but the moment we saw the surf going off, it’s a race against time.

Carl Lewis running the hundred-meter dash looked slow as an old lady compared to us. I mean the way we went about busting out the surfboards, waxing them up, locking up the car, and running in frantic hysteria to the waves, you’d think a pack of starving wolves were chasing after us.

But, God! The waves were good, and there was nobody else out in the water. Hell, there was nobody else for miles! Talk about not having to worry about a crowd; that was the cool thing about driving three hours to the middle of nowhere on what one would be overly generous to even call a road. Broken down path seemed more fitting. But for guys like Tim and me, coming upon a site like that was like a six-year-old trick or treating kid on Halloween night coming upon Willy Wonka’s house.

We surfed and surfed. The waves kept coming in one after another, set after set, steady as could be, and beautiful as could be. The hours just flew by like the birds flying in the off shore breeze.

Before we knew it, we were surfing in the mid afternoon sun, which in such desolate parts of Mexico has an ethereal quality to it, like time is holding still, like the end of the Earth is eminent but there is nothing you can do. And it was at this time, under this sun, that huge freak sets started coming in, big, mean and powerful sets. They would break way outside and completely close out, leaving you with a foot of foam on top of violently churning white water and practically impossible duck dives to deal with.

The swell was rising and the waves it was bringing were no joke. Soon the swell was gonna be too much for this spot to handle.

A somewhat common misconception about waves is that they’ll simply break bigger depending on the size of the swell, with no other major change to the wave’s shape other than it’s size. Well, that’s not really the case. You see, there is a sort of balance being struck between the size of the swell and the shape of the sea floor. If the swell is not big enough, there won’t be any waves, and if the shape of the sea floor is not marked or defined enough for the size of the swell, the waves will not be affected by it and will simply break when they reach a shallow enough depth. And when they do, they will do so all at once, creating what is commonly known as a close out.

“ There is a spot in a little town no more than an hour and a half from here that has a really strong reef that I am sure can handle this swell,” I told Tim. “If we leave right now, we could surf it for at least one or two hours before sun down.” He stared at me with clumps from the thick foam sticking to his face and smiling, as if to say, “I’m glad you are here.” Then he proclaimed, “We are out of here!”

Flying through the good sections of the road, we made our best imitation of those European races where they scram through muddy dirt back roads on the bad sections.
In only a smidge under an hour, we stormed into the peaceful little town of San Juan with our white Beetle painted thick brown with mud.

And sure enough, the waves were peeling in beautifully. The reef was handling the dam huge swell like a champ, and the waves were breaking perfectly. Once again, there was not a single surfer in the water.

We did our whole lock up the car and scram for the water like your life depended on it deal again, and in a blink of an eye we were in the water.

We were like pigs in fresh mud. We couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces. We were getting barreled on practically every other wave, and not one of them would close out. The surf gods had smiled on us yet again.

After about twenty minutes of all that ecstasy, as I was paddling back to the point, I felt a sting on my wrist. It was like a jellyfish sting but ten times worse. I screamed as I slapped my hand in the water hoping to slap it off if it was a jellyfish. Feeling the acute sting still sharply on my wrist, I went to wipe it off with my hand, but there was nothing there. As I rubbed my wrist in pain, I looked at the water around me to see what the hell kind of jellyfish had stung me, but I couldn’t see anything in the water either. Half freaked out and confused, I kept paddling back out to the point even though my hand was starting to go numb. It was a freaky kind of numb though, because though it was going numb and I was losing feeling in it, I could feel the pounding pain of the sting inside it. Then I noticed that the strange numbness was spreading into my forearm. I was no expert on jellyfish or any other marine life, but something told me I’d best start paddling towards the beach.

As I was paddling there, I crossed Tim paddling to the point and with a bewildered look he asked, “What’s wrong dude? Where are you going?”

“ Some weird jellyfish just stung me and my arm is going numb,” I told him. “I’m gona sit at the beach and see if it passes.”

“ Are you ok?” he asked.

“ I don’t know, but watch out for the jellyfish,” I said.

By the time I got to the beach, my whole arm was numb and the pounding pain was getting worse. I laid my board on the sand and sat beside it for a couple of seconds.

The numbness had started to spread to my chest and neck. I decided to walk to one of the little restaurants in the town and ask for a glass of milk. My mom had told me that milk slowed down or counteracted the effects of venom. We had once made my cat drink milk when it ate a poison. Come to think of now though, he did die. So I guess maybe milk is not really that strong of an antidote. At one of the restaurants however, I asked for a glass of milk. By this time the pain had spread throughout the trunk of my body and had become especially excruciating in my stomach. I remember having to speak very softly to the girl behind the bar because the tension in the muscles needed to speak normal was unbearable. I took two good gulps of the milk, and as I stopped to catch my breath before finishing the glass off, I suddenly felt so nauseated that I was afraid I was going to throw up right then and there. I immediately got up and walked outside, figuring if I walked the nausea would pass, and if it didn’t, at least I would throw up outside and not in the restaurant. It was then that I realized that the numbing and pain were now spreading into my legs, and had passed my neck into my jaw and mouth.

Suddenly throwing up was the least of my worries. I didn’t know what to do; I needed somebody’s help. But I didn’t want to stagger to somebody and start having to explain what was going on. The pain of talking alone would’ve been unbearable. Instead, I decided that lying down in the middle of the square between the restaurants would make it obvious that there was something wrong, and surely somebody would come to my aid. All and all a good plan I figured, until lying there with my face in the dust filled with concrete I heard two women whisper as they walked pass me, “Look at that, so young and already a drunk.” My would be rescuers walked past me in utter disgust! They just thought I was drunk! As I sluggishly and achingly looked around, I saw other people shaking their heads at me as they whispered stuff to one another. I couldn’t believe it. Instead of coming to my aid, people were just walking around and avoiding me. This plan sucked! I needed to come up with something better and fast.

By now the numbing and pounding pain was all over my body and getting worse. Suddenly it occurred to me, “People are walking around me because the street doesn’t belong to anyone, and no one has anything to lose by my lying here, but if I were lying in the middle of one of the restaurants, then somebody would have to address me, even if only to kick me out.” So mustering all the strength in me, I started crawling to the closest restaurant. Everything was out of focus and the pain was so intense it even hurt to breathe. Everything started seeming strangely distant, like in a dream. Completely drained by the time I had made it to the middle of the half empty mom and pop restaurant, I just let go. I dropped on my back and waited for somebody to come.

Before too long, people were gathering around. I had a hard time understanding what they ware saying, but it was clear that they understood there was something wrong. I took in a deep breath and loudly as I could said, “hurts.” Oddly enough, the word came out as barely more than a whisper. Nevertheless they heard it because the next thing I know they were all asking, “Where does it hurt, kid?” and “What happened, son?” I again took in a deep breath and loudly as I could whisper, “Jellyfish,” to which they all started asking, “Where son?” “Where did it sting you?” “My wrist,” I whispered as I lifted my left wrist for an instant to signal which wrist. An older woman held my wrist, examining it I suppose, and asked, “Is this where it hurts?” to which I again with a deep breath answered, “Hurts everywhere.”

I heard the voice of an older man say, “Spray coke on him where it hurts.” Apparently spraying Coca-Cola where a jellyfish stings you was a home remedy of his. So next thing I know, I’m getting sprayed with coke from head to toe. I don’t know if the spraying of coke really works in some cases, but other than make me sticky, it did nothing for me. When they realized it wasn’t working, or when they ran out of Coke, I’m not really sure which, they started debating whether to pour flour on me or to rub me with lemon juice. And since the lemons were already cut in halves and served on the dinner tables, the lemon juice won out. So next thing I knew, I was getting rubbed by dozens of hands with lemon halves. Perhaps the rubbing of lemon juice on a jellyfish sting cure works in some cases, but in mine, other than getting me stickier and smelling nice, I noticed not a bit of difference. A part of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the scene and another part of me wanted to beg them to take me to a hospital, but I didn’t have the energy to do either. As I stared helplessly into space and thought to myself, “I hope when these good people run out of remedies they take me to a hospital.” I suddenly started seeing little black dots. And as I lay there, they slowly grew bigger and bigger until everything was black; and then just like that, I was out.

I was lost in oblivion, suspended in absolute silence, in absolute darkness. Then faintly, as from a great distance, I noticed the sound of a man screaming, an agonizing kind of screaming, the way you would think a man being tortured in Medieval times would scream kind of screaming. As I focused on it, it got louder and louder until it was right next to me. Slowly waking up, I felt the freshly washed texture of the pillowcase on my face, and the soft breeze of a fan nearby. But where was I? And why was there a man screaming next to me like he was being drawn and quartered? Then the thick smell of iodine in the air brought it home to me; I was in the hospital. The nice people in the restaurant had given up and taken me to the hospital. I felt groggy and half gone, but at least nothing hurt any more. Compared to the poor guy next to me, I was peaches and cream. Apparently he had been stung by a particularly nasty type of scorpion and the hospital had run out of the anti-venom, so all they could do for him was to hook him up to an IV and hope for the best. As I lay there trying to regain my senses, I realized I had an IV hooked to my arm too. It occurred to me that if they didn’t have a scorpion anti-venom, there was no way they had anti-venom for whatever weird jellyfish had stung me. And we were probably both being given the same treatment, attach us to an IV and hope for the best. So I figured since I was going to depend on my immune system to do most of the work, I might as well help it by spending as little energy as possible and passing out. At least I would avoid hearing the tortured screams of the poor guy next to me; I clocked out and didn’t wake up till well into the morning.

I awoke to see Tim at the side of my bed saying, “Man, that was some kind of nasty jellyfish that stung you dude.” “I had no idea it was gonna mess you up this bad bro.”

“ Neither did I. I didn’t even know something like this could happen from a jellyfish sting.”

“ You should have seen the towns people when I came out looking for you.” He continued, “I think they wanted to lynch me! Even old women were cursing at me. At least I think they were cursing at me. It was all in Spanish so I couldn’t understand it, but it sure sounded nasty whatever it was. They were pissed off as hell about me staying surfing when you got stung. I tried to tell them that I didn’t know it was this bad but they didn’t care, they just kept on cursing at me.”

“ Man that’s hilarious, I would’ve loved to have seen it,” I said.

“ Yea I bet you would’ve been laughing your ass off,” he said. “Anyway, you feeling better now? The surf is still pumping you know?”

I just smiled and said, “Yeah, I’m all right now. Let’s get out of here. By the way, what the hell happened at the restaurant?”

Tim replied, “When I came looking for you there was all kinds of crap on the floor, and some woman kept shaking a sliced up lemon at me.”

“ Oh you are not going to believe it! I’ll tell you all about it on the way to the beach,” I said. And just like that, I paid my bill and we went right back to the beach. After all, as my grandmother told me, “the world was my oyster,” and I wasn’t going to let some freak jellyfish keep me out of the water when the waves were good. We did go to a different beach though, just in case, you know? The rest of the surf trip was blessed with good waves, and no more jellyfish. To this day I haven’t got a clue what kind of jellyfish stung me, but I haven’t gotten stung by another like it since; and I hope I never do!