Stung In The Face: A Scorpion Story

The day began as all great misfortunes do: with optimism. The sky was stretched tight and blue, the sun a merciless fireball, and I, like a fool, thought the universe was smiling on me.

This was my between jobs era—an economic and existential free fall—where my daily itinerary consisted of getting tan, staying cool, and not thinking too hard about my predicament. And I had a system.

The pool was my oasis. A hidden gem of suburban paradise, complete with a jacuzzi. The trick was to show up mid-afternoon, when the sun was raging and the neighborhood children had been exiled indoors by worried mothers convinced that too much heat would kill them. This was my kingdom, and I ruled it with a Bluetooth speaker, Hair Metal Nation on Sirius XM and two towels.

I arrived in high spirits, phone and speaker in one hand, towels in the other, mind brimming with delusions of control. The lock clicked, the gate creaked, and I entered the pool area like a man who had just walked onto his private island. The only other inhabitants: my neighbor and her college-aged daughter, lazily floating in the water, blissfully unaware that a nightmare was already in motion.

“Ladies,” I greeted, setting up my station—one towel on the chair, the other rolled up for a pillow. Standard operating procedure. I stretched out, basking in the full, blistering rage of the sun. Twenty minutes one side, twenty on the other. Ritualistic. Predictable. Controlled.

But life does not reward control.

When I reached peak solar absorption, I slid into the pool to join my neighbors. We chatted about god-knows-what for god-knows-how-long, because time loses meaning in water. It could have been twenty minutes, or it could have been five years. All I know is that when I climbed out of that pool, I was already a dead man walking.

I gathered my things and ambled back to the truck, a picture of serenity. My towel, still damp from the chair, was draped over the driver’s seat, and my phone and speaker were tossed into the center console.

Then, in a moment of unchecked, reckless spontaneity, I took the second towel—the one I had balled up in my hand—and shoved it directly into my face to wipe away what few chlorinated beads of water might remain on my face.

The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.

A bolt of raw, vengeful electricity shot through my skull. My nose erupted in a supernova of searing pain. It was not a sting. It was a goddamn execution. I howled like a man being baptized in napalm. My body launched into a full-scale crisis response—arms flailing, legs convulsing, language reduced to a torrent of violent profanity.

I ripped the towel away and there it was.

A scorpion.

A real, living, venomous son of a bitch, writhing in my towel, fresh from the act of assaulting my face.

I had spent two decades as a committed vegetarian. I respected nature. I let spiders live. I saved drowning bees. I believed in karma.

But karma was not with me now.

In a split-second act of divine vengeance, I obliterated that scuttling bastard with the heel of my hand, sending its soul screaming into the void. Then, still half-blind from pain and adrenaline, I ran back toward the pool, where my neighbors were still floating, oblivious to the carnage that had just unfolded.

“I JUST GOT STUNG BY A SCORPION!” I bellowed, eyes wild, pointing at my face like a man convinced his own head had been set on fire.

The mother blinked. “Where?”

“RIGHT HERE, IN MY FACE.”

“No, I mean where did it happen?”

“Oh. By my truck.” I was still panting, my heart hammering like an engine on the verge of explosion. “I grabbed my towel to wipe my face, and the thing was inside. It must have crawled onto it while I was in the pool with you.”

The mother frowned, gears turning. Then she pointed at me, accusingly.

“No way. That scorpion didn’t crawl onto your towel at the pool. You brought it with you. It was already in your towel when you left the house.”

Her words hit me like a wrecking ball.

Oh, my God.

She was right.

I hadn’t just been stung. I had been carrying the scorpion—transporting it like some kind of insane, unknowing death chauffeur. This thing had been in my possession for hours, maybe longer, just waiting for its moment to strike.

Meanwhile, my face was mutating. The pain had given way to a creeping numbness, a deadening sensation spreading like a nerve agent. “How bad does it look?” I asked, desperate for confirmation that my body was actively shutting down.

The daughter squinted. “Yeah, I guess I can kind of see it’s swollen.”

I was on the verge of death, and these two were delivering half-hearted medical opinions like they were judging a bruised peach at the grocery store.

This was useless. I needed real help.

I bolted home, grabbed my phone, and called a friend for advice. She had no idea. I Googled: What do you do if you’ve been stung in the face by a scorpion?

The answer: Poison Control.

I dialed in a frenzy, my mind screaming this is it, this is how it ends.

“Poison Control Hotline, is this an emergency?”

“I honestly don’t know. But I think so.”

The operator’s voice was carefully neutral, but I could hear the undercurrent of panic.

“What’s the problem?”

“I was just stung in the face by a scorpion.” I emphasized the face. It seemed crucial that he understood the extreme nature of the event.

A pause. Then, the sound of frantic typing. The clicking of keys.

“Where did this happen?”

“The pool.”

“No, what state?”

“Oh. California. San Diego.”

Another pause. Then a dramatic shift in tone.

“Oh. You’ll be fine.”

My brain short-circuited. “Wait. What?”

“You’re in California. You’re fine. How do you feel?”

“Well, my face is kind of numb, but the pain’s gone.”

“Any swelling?”

I checked the mirror. Nothing. If there was any swelling, it was at a level only visible to electron microscopes.

“No. I feel kind of stupid now.”

“Buddy, if you were in Arizona, we’d be having a whole different conversation.”

“So I’m good?”

“You’re good. Get some Benadryl if it swells later, but if it hasn’t by now, you’re fine.”

Just like that, it was over.

Thirty minutes later, the numbness was gone. I looked exactly the same as when I left the house. The entire event had been reduced to a glorified anecdote.

But a damn good one.

Now, whenever someone brings up scorpions, I have a card to play.

“Scorpions? Oh yeah, I got stung in the face by one. No big deal.”

And that, my friend, is worth its weight in gold.