DON’T BITE MY TONGUE

By Corky Carroll

From time to time I have written about the adventures of my neighbor and pal, the infamous “Iguana.”  From frozen dogs and cats in his freezer to swiping Speedos off  dead guys in Mexico, it’s always something with him.  This week he pulled another one. 

For those of you who don’t know the Iguana I can only tell you that he is about as loco as it gets outside of one of those homes for loco dudes.  He is also a legendary surfer and former big time lifeguard from the Seal Beach area.  He is known for crossing the line from normal to the land of Oz, so to speak.  But on this rare occasion it was not something that he did that got him into trouble, well not directly anyway.  He got bugged by a bug.

It had been a wonderful day of surfing.  The waves were excellent and the Iguana and our other neighbor, Tommy Evans, had put numerous hours into happily shredding long walls and basking in a beautiful day.  I was out of town on a mission and missed it.  I hate missing it.  Anyway, that evening the Iguana and Tommy decided to head down to a local café and grab a pizza and a bottle of wine.  They were worn out from the days surfing and neither had any energy to make dinner. 

The Iguana tends to drink more than most mortals.  I don’t know how he does it.  And, on this occasion as with many, OK most, other occasions he put down quite a bit of vino.  Sometime later in the evening when the stories where getting more colorful, and the Iguana was really getting personality, he was energetically in the middle of one of his rants about something and went to take a drink from his wine glass without looking at it.  He didn’t see the wasp that had landed right on the edge of his glass.  As he went to take a sip the thing stung him right on the end of his tongue. 

Within minutes, and in the midst of a lot of “oughs” and “ohs” and general moaning and groaning, his tongue started to swell up and also turned black.  From what everybody said it was quite entertaining for everyone there, except probably the Iguana himself.  Pain has a kinda way of taking the joy out of an experience like that.  After awhile his tongue was really big and he was having a hard time talking, which is really bad for him as he loves to talk.

So he decided it was time to go home and take some Benadryl or something. 

Later that night the Iguana calls up Tommy and is incoherent.  “Agaawalawala  ma togawalabango.” 

Tommy figures the Iguana is wasted and tells him to call him back when he is sober enough to talk.  A few minutes later he gets another call and it is more of the same.  That is when he realized that maybe the Iguanas condition had worsened.  A emergency run to the hospital possibly saved the Iguanas life. 

Tommy reported with a huge smile, “His tongue was the size of a giant salami and sticking out of his mouth about five inches, it was classic!”