May 25, 2020
I am weeding someone’s native-plants-only yard and under a patch of dead reed grass I find a snake hole. I say to my coworker Lauren who is over on the other side of the garden “I just found a snake hole”. As I say this a snake lunges out of the hole and sinks its fangs into my bicep.
Luckily, my coworker Lauren had turned around at this moment — just in time to see me get bit by a snake. This is important solely for the myth of this tale which will hopefully be spread amongst my other coworkers (Hailey and Evan).
Some men cry out in pain when bit by a snake. I do not.
It is a young copperhead (agkistrodon contortrix), and I gently coax its fangs out of my bicep and set it down on the ground again — giving it a slight pat on the tail (in place of its ass which is the gesture I am trying to achieve — a slap on the ass, that is. ‘You damn copperhead, look what you did. Ahahah alright now get outta here! :^ )”) to send it on its way. “I forgive you”.
Lauren runs over to me to ask if I am OK. No time to talk, Lauren, as I have already begun to suck the poison out of my bicep.
[When envisioning this fantasy in my mind I thought for some reason that it is difficult, in terms of neck and arm flexibility, to suck on your own bicep. It isn’t. Try it now if you do not believe me.]
I finish sucking all of the poison of my body.
At this point the event is already waaay over in my mind, but Lauren looks shaken and may want to discuss it some. Unfortunately, I now see that in her pile of weeds she is not pulling the dandelions out completely, just hacking at their roots, as it were, so that some of them may be back on the surface of the garden in a week or two. I don’t want to mansplain to her about how to remove a dandelion from a yard, so instead I say, referring to one of the dandelions that she pulled out all of the way, “Wow, look at the root on that sucker! That’s a great pull.”, trying to very offhandedly encourage her to try and pull out all of the root.
We finish weeding the garden, and, while standing 6 ft. away, I make funny and charming small talk with Nor, the garden’s owner.
Never once do I mention the snake bite incident — not with Nor, not with my coworker Lauren, not with my coworkers Hailey and Evan. Nor do I mention the incident for many many years, until one day, maybe 50 years into the future when I am a handsome and gracefully-aged (and still vital (that is, virile)) older man sitting in my fireplace-lit cabin in the Pacific Northwest with my beautiful and intelligent family do I mention this specific incident. And even then it is just through the mention of a bundle of such incidents:
“Ah hah ha, you know, Ben III, that I have been bit by poisonous snakes over 1,000 times. OK, now that’s all the storytelling tonight from Grandpa. Time for bed.”
“OK. I love you, Grandpa.”
“I love you too.”
