One of my earliest erroneous conclusions:
I was hazily aware of the bright and multiple pleasantnesses of summer -- probably wearing something called a “sunsuit” -- and getting about in a neighbor’s garden, fresh new green scents coming from everywhere. I could walk, though I was new at it; the ground was tricky and there were rocks. Other people were nearby, and that’s about all I knew.
Then I felt something cold and icky. I lifted my bare foot to see a red goo of something squashed, on my foot and on the stone beneath.
The horror, the horror . . .
Now our suburb wasn’t anywhere near the ocean, and certainly I’d have had a lot more to worry about than goo had I been correct, but it was clear to me then that I’d stepped on -- what else? -- a jellyfish. I was somehow old enough to have come across the word, though apparently not to have seen a picture, let alone its habitat.
And I shuddered over recollections of that clammy encounter for years and years and years.
Now I would love to shift this tale to an intelligent musing on how long we entertain the hasty reasonings of our youth.
But you’ll be better prepared for what comes along here if you know that even at the time I understood I was standing in a strawberry patch. . . .
I was hazily aware of the bright and multiple pleasantnesses of summer -- probably wearing something called a “sunsuit” -- and getting about in a neighbor’s garden, fresh new green scents coming from everywhere. I could walk, though I was new at it; the ground was tricky and there were rocks. Other people were nearby, and that’s about all I knew.
Then I felt something cold and icky. I lifted my bare foot to see a red goo of something squashed, on my foot and on the stone beneath.
The horror, the horror . . .
Now our suburb wasn’t anywhere near the ocean, and certainly I’d have had a lot more to worry about than goo had I been correct, but it was clear to me then that I’d stepped on -- what else? -- a jellyfish. I was somehow old enough to have come across the word, though apparently not to have seen a picture, let alone its habitat.
And I shuddered over recollections of that clammy encounter for years and years and years.
Now I would love to shift this tale to an intelligent musing on how long we entertain the hasty reasonings of our youth.
But you’ll be better prepared for what comes along here if you know that even at the time I understood I was standing in a strawberry patch. . . .
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