I was trying to remember how to spell “anaphylactic”....

Here's a good one from last summer.....

It takes a very special sort of person to get up at 6:30 a.m. to swim 3½ miles across the Pamlico River.

And by “very special,” I mean “cracked.”

Well, that’s pretty strong language for someone my size to use — let’s just say it would have been a great morning for sleeping in.

But I was headed towards the south shore from my family’s small cottage at 6:40, with my dad motoring aside me in my small dinghy as the waves got bigger and the jellyfish grew thicker.

I hate jellyfish.

We don’t have the deadly jellies around our summer place in Beaufort County, a little downriver from the town of Bath. And we don’t have them every year. But when we do have them, we have them in Biblical proportions.

And my expression of esteem for these creatures of God knew no higher level of eloquence and clarity than after I got tangled with the fourth one in the first mile.

But lest you think the broad brackish waters of North Carolina’s aquatic fraying fringes only hold gelatinous stinging critters, we also have crabs.

It’s been a really good year for crabs.

I found one during my swim. Or rather it found me. To be specific, it found my thumb.

Maybe I should have taken a cue from the two-foot stingray I’d found in the river the day before. It was dead.

Anyway, by the fifth jellyfish, after the passing ferry’s captain hailed us to make sure we were okay, I was trying to remember how to spell “anaphylactic” and thinking maybe I might wanna play again some other time.

Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. My Dad was as good a sport as could be. He handled the boat as well as he could through the whitecaps.I don’t know whether he follows me on my adventures out of fatherly love or morbid curiosity, but he did everything he could — including making room for me when I broached into the boat like a Polaris missile.

I’ve successfully swum the river before, as has my Dad, and I’ll make it again some other time. I was carving a great pace until weather and venomous animals foiled me.

What did I learn? Pick a day with better weather? Pick a time with fewer jellyfish? If we’ll poison our rivers, swimmers will have fewer menacing critters to contend with?

No.

Panty hose. Reportedly, jellyfish can’t sting through the small mesh of panty hose. That’s the scientific truth, or at least a really good practical joke.

So if you see someone flailing about in the Pamlico River with one set of panty hose over his head and arms and another worn in the more conventional fashion, it’s probably me.

I won’t pretend to know you if you’ll just look the other way.