If you haven’t checked out my photos from Mexico yet, I’ll let you know that I got stung by a stingray.

I was following the advice in this link: shuffling my feet to avoid stepping directly on a ray, etc. However, I did not heed this sage advice: stay away from areas in which stingrays congregate. Doh!

Wading into the water a bit deeper so I could catch a better glimpse of all of the stingrays I could see just a few yards offshore, I realized I was in a spot where sand being kicked up by the breaking waves was making it impossible to see where I was shufflin. I decided to quickly step toward the shore, and that’s when I felt the slap of the ray’s tail against my aqua sock. The stinger went straight through my shoe and,when I removed it, I was bleeding pretty well.

The initial pain was mellow, but once that poison worked its way in—whooo! That sucked. It felt a little better when it was in the water, so I paced around, dragging my foot in the gulf. But soon, even that started to really hurt and my foot began to swell. I walked up to the house, where my mother started urging me to pee on my own foot (she said she saw that on “Survivor”). I opted to rinse it in the shower instead (which it turns out was a good idea, as one is supposed to soak the wound in hot water). I then downed two narcotic-level pain relievers and chugged two beers.

I have to say, it hurt pretty bad, but I was certainly not acting like this guy.

It continued to hurt like hell and my brother in law had the quick wits to think we should go to the Red Cross, where they shot me full of numbing agents. It worked much better than the hydrocodone beer routine that I tried at first, which only succeeded in making me have queezy halucinations and failed to alleviate any of the pain.

I was pain free, and wasted, for the rest of the day.