My prep school had a mini term in January. In our junior year, we did a marine biology course in St. John’s Virgin Islands. What a trip! I learned a great deal about marine life.
Our teacher was a pretty good teacher. She was the one when I was 12, in 7th grade, told us we would not live past 20 due to all the nuclear fall-out from the atom bombs in World War II. This did not go over well with my parents. (God knows what they would think about what goes on in schools now). The teacher was definitely not a good chaperone. All of us were of an age to drink in the islands, not the US. I rarely drank but enjoyed a pina colada or some other fancy island drink. The teacher decided that we could each drink until dinnertime but not afterwards. Yes, that silly. On an empty stomach. (Turns out she was an alcoholic).
The stars were outstanding. I still don’t have quite the imagination to see the figures astrology has named but love the magnificence of the ocean, dark sky with bright stars and planets.
One night I remember walking to a campsite with a classmate who had a crush on a guy there. As we walked, we heard footsteps behind us. When we stopped, the footsteps stopped! We whipped around with our flashlights. Nothing! We tried this a few more times and a few more times we heard the footsteps when we walked, and they stopped when we stopped. We turned around and flashed our flashlight. Nothing. Eerie. Finally, we turned around and shown our lights down. There was a crab on its hind legs following us. It was HUGE. Its huge claws seemed to reach 3 feet in the air. Yikes!
We walked much faster. It couldn’t quite keep up and gave up. Thank goodness. Maybe it had heard about the party or had a crush on this guy, too? But this guy would probably have just seen that crab as dinner.
With that in mind, a year and nine months later, my first week at university, the resident adviser for our hall called us all together and gave us a talk about what to expect. She talked about STDs, (which topic I thought was pretty presumptuous but apparently only for me) including “crabs” and how it can be very difficult to get rid of them.
I thought – whaaa? How could you not just see a 3′ crab try to grab you and dodge it? And if you didn’t succeed in dodging it, how could you not just pick that 3′ crab off your leg and get rid of it? Maybe with pliers if it had a vice grip….? How is a crab an STD?
Oddly, for that same teacher, with that same classmate, in 7th grade, we did a report on STDs considered risque at the time. But our research did not come across crabs, 3′ or otherwise.
c. GCYI