you're gonna need an ocean...
for the first time in almost 14 years, i think i am experiencing a return visit from my old nemesis: Poison Ivy. in my youth that pernicious weed, that insalubrious inflamer of the epidermis, that nefarious ruiner of summer was the annual price to pay for long days spent traipsing through woods and chasing errant baseballs into the underbrush. (don't get me wrong, i played video games and watched TV, too). i even got it so bad once in high school that i actually had to miss school for a couple days- it clustered on the backs of my knees and in my crotch to the point where it was one huge blob of blisters that eventually popped and oozed. i remember sitting around the house with napkins everywhere to try to keep from covering everything i touched with a slime trail. i eventually had to be put on an oral steroid that fucked so badly with my already roiling teenage hormones that my parents would find me crying in my room for no reason at all.
in 1993 i returned to college for my sophomore year with a rather mild case by my standards. i was back a few days before most of the rest of campus for reasons that i no longer remember, and by the time my roommate showed up, it was pretty much done with. i don't even remember what i did with those days to myself back in the halcyon days before the internet beckoned at every slack tide in the daily planner. the point of this is that that was the last time that i had poison ivy. after about 12 straight years of affliction, i managed to avoid it. this despite several backcountry camping trips in Shenandoah National Park, hikes in the woods, a summer spent as a counselor at a day camp, etc. for a while i thought that maybe my body had even built up a tolerance to it, learning that it was better to let sleeping histamines lie rather than endure a week or more of itching and furtive scratching.
so it was with some shock when i began scratching at the back of my leg yesterday, thinking that maybe i had become the victim of yet another mosquito bite (they've been particularly fond of me this year) when i started to feel multiple bumps close together in a pattern that was decidedly more regional. upon closer inspection, it appears to be confirmed: looks like i brought something else home from Fire Island besides a sunburn.
