It’s normally excruciating pain.
I’ve heard it described as a knife slicing through your skin. But for me, my jellyfish sting didn’t hurt a bit.
It happened when I was eight years old, on a family vacation to Puerto Rico. The trip had been going pretty smoothly, until one fateful day when my mother and I decided to go to the beach.
At the beach, my mom stayed on the sand watching as I explored the ocean. I was cautious about going too far into the water, so I only waded as far as another family nearby was standing, which was about waist-deep. I was just becoming accustomed to this treacherous new depth when I felt a pinch on my left forearm. It didn’t exactly hurt, but I was startled because I thought I had brushed up against some sea creature.
After wading back to shore and showing my mom all the new wavy lines on my forearm, we decided to go to a beach security guard to see what it could have been. Immediately, he looked at my arm and declared that it was, in fact, a jellyfish sting. My mom and I were confused because it didn’t look or feel like a normal jellyfish sting. Nevertheless, he insisted that was what it was, and so we went back to the apartment to get some medicine for it.
Upon reaching the apartment, I told my sister that I had been stung by a jellyfish. She didn’t believe me, because she thought I should have been at least crying. When I showed her the lines on my arm, though, she quickly became just as confused as my mom and I were.
It was the strangest injury I have ever received. Those marks stayed on my arms for about six months afterward, and I never experienced any pain. I have all sorts of theories as to why that is, but whatever the case, the rest of our vacation ended up going just as smoothly as before the incident, and I had a blast regardless of my sting. I chalk it all up to experience, and count myself as lucky that I earned some killer marks on my arm, without any of the pain associated with it.
By Annabelle Podmore