If you ever find yourself standing in front of a patch of poison ivy, wondering what it would feel like to get it all over your body,,,,,, STOP, don’t roll around in it. I’ve already had this life experience. I can tell you what it’s like.
I went to high school at a church boarding school. I know, you’re like, “boarding school, isn’t that for juvenile delinquents?” Well, yes, juvenile delinquents and church kids. We had both. The school sat on 342 acres in what I’m now told is referred to as the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. That seems rather grandiose. If you put the Poconos out near the Rockies, they would be considered the foothills of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. My dad worked for the church in New Jersey, and we lived on the campus of the school. I never had to board in the dorm, but I attended class with everyone else who did.
Much of the 342 acres that made up the property was forestland that rose up in the rolling hills behind the school. Logging roads ran everywhere through those hills. When I was a freshman or sophomore, my buddies and I decided that it would be a great place to go camping. One Saturday we packed up our backpacks and headed up into the woods with our pocket knives, bb guns, and sleeping bags. We left late in the day, so by the time we rolled out our bags and started looking for firewood, it was dark. This turned out to be of great importance. We started our fire, cooked up some food, and talked until we all got tired. The night was uneventful. The next morning we packed up our stuff and hiked back down to my house. I took a shower and settled in to spend a lazy Sunday in front of the TV. Then it started, an itch here, a scratch there. It got worse hour by hour. By the afternoon the rash started to show up. I had it everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Seems there was poison ivy where I was gathering my firewood. By evening it was driving me out of my mind. Instead of going to school on Monday morning, I went to the doctor’s office to get a shot. Then, on Tuesday, I spent a lot of time explaining why my face looked funny.
To sum it up.
PROS: I don’t know, maybe the morning off of school.
CONS: You itch like never before. You look funny for a week and a half. Nobody wants to spend that much time applying anti-itch cream.
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