Technology, Innovation & Telecomm

I was young. Not terribly experienced in the world. And pretty gullible, truth told.

When I was in my 20’s, I spent a few years as a field Engineer for Rockwell International. I traveled the country diagnosing and repairing, configuring and commissioning, and generally getting natural-gas chromatography gear working. I was preparing for my first trip to California to help get a site in the desert functioning, and was being advised on various aspects of life in the sand from some co-workers. Of the advice that I received from my well-meaning colleagues, the suggestion to watch out for scorpions most struck a nerve with me. For some reason, the idea of being stung by one of those little buggers just didn’t sit well. I obsessed a bit on it and finally resolved that the chances were small and I just wasn’t going to think about it.

I arrived at the hotel without incident and when I stepped out of the car, the first thing that I noticed was that my shoes sunk into the very-soft pavement of the parking lot. It was hot…really hot. I looked around at the site on which the hotel sat and was immediately impressed by the sight of a lot of sand and very little else surrounding it…with the possible exception of tumble-weeds. No kidding, real honest-to-gosh tumbleweeds. For some reason, I thought you only saw those on re-runs of spaghetti Westerns on TV. But I digress…

Anyhow, I suppose in the back of my mind I was still obsessing about Scorpions, though I didn’t know it at that moment.

I had a late dinner due to the fact that we arrived at the hotel late, and since that took up the bulk of the evening, I decided to turn in. I wear gym shorts to bed and due to the heat (even with air-conditioning), I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Sometime in the early morning, I felt a sharp pain in my thigh…quite enough to wake me. Immediately, I thought that I had been stung by one of those objects of my fears and I swatted at the site of the pain. I felt a hard-ish object and heard a click as whatever it was hit the wall next to the bed. By that time, my heart was doing a samba and I leapt off the side of the bed opposite where I had heard the thing hit. I turned on the bedside lamp and began crawling around the bottom of the bed on my hands and knees. I’m not sure what I figured I would do if I found a Scorpion, but there I was, “Joe Commando”, tracking the sand-devil. Silly. I couldn’t immediately see anything, but there was a small upholstered chair in the corner and I decided that I must have hit somewhere near there.

As I crawled slowly toward it and around the side of the chair, I sighted my enemy:

…my pocket comb…

It seems that before I went to bed, I had transferred my comb from my pants pocket to my gym shorts. I can’t say why but I distinctly remembered doing it, after the fact. Anyhow, I suspect that as I was sleeping and rolling about in bed, the comb came out of my pocket. Thereafter, when I rolled over, it must have dug into my leg. Thus, my “scorpion comb” was what “bit” me! I was able to laugh at myself for a while before I went back to bed. I slept great the rest of the night.

What a potent combination: Youth and imagination.

1. 
   Something important said...
   7:51 am - December 9th, 2005

   Something important

   Something important