thebeckybug

I wake up, my arm itches a very distinct itch. I look down and there’s a little line of bumps along the underside of my arm. I’m hoping, praying it’s chiggers. As I perform a circus act to get a closer look at the inside of my upper arm, I see little red dots inside all the bumps. I have hope! It could be chiggers! I apply some finger nail polish to the area, because the stuff, it’s toxic, and it makes the chiggers go away.

Later in the afternoon, fingernail polish still glossy on my arm, it starts itching. Underneath three layers of Opi Quick-Dry Top Coat, clearly not chiggers. The little red ninnies would not be able to stand the fumes. Maybe a bee or fire ant or something got stuck in my sleeve and bit me repeatedly. Maybe something just scratched me, or I got rug burn on the underside of my upper arm, you know, when I was applying my deodorant wrapped in carpet. I know these wishes are only in vain, for the true cause of my itchy arm is from the depths of itchiness hell, the devil incarnate in plant form … THE POISON IVY.

In case you couldn’t tell, The Poison Ivy tops the list of things I want least to happen to my body. I prefer being hit by an 18-wheeler to being in contact with The Poison Ivy.

As a girl scout, I was trained to tell the difference between poison oak, poison ivy, poison sumac and variegated pothos. I was not allergic to any of these plants and could roll around in any ivy patch as a youngster. I would emerge from a raging pit of ivy, positively identify it as poisonous, and walk away with merely a fond memory of a good romp. Later, I went to college and the poisonous plant knowledge base was replaced with some less applicable knowledge.

Now, I unknowingly get covered in the plant’s oil, apply it liberally all over my body and miss-remember the stuff exists. I call this the idiotic stage.

A few weeks will go by. You heard me. A few weeks, as in, a month. As in, the time it takes you to tell if you’re conceiving a baby. Nothing abnormal, nothing itchy happens for a whole month. I call this the blissful ignorance stage.

And then a rash shows up. During this stage, I cannot do anything to spread the rash, the damage is already done. The rash will merely be showing up wherever I was in contact with the poison ivy, a few weeks ago. Slowly at first. Little red bumps appear then turn into blisters that itch to high heaven. And it gets worse and worse. And it starts showing up in other spots. And then every stray spot on my body gets investigated. Each little spot on my body could give me a hint to whether one poisonous leaf just wisped by one spot on my arm, or if I accidentally performed a sadistic tribal dance, wrapping poisoned vines all over my body. In the latter case, I know to look forward to a month of hellacious body-itching. I call this the hopeless utter confusion and torture stage.

The worst part about the hopeless utter confusion and torture stage is the amount of brain space confiscated by the itching. I find myself unable to do my taxes because the part of my brain that used to be able to fill in forms is replaced by the thought of itching. What used to be an easy task of cooking mac and cheese (the Velveeta kind where all the ingredients come in the box) becomes an inedible dinner of mush because I got distracted with trying not to scratch all the itching. And then I end up hungry and itchy, and it just gets to be too much to handle!

Right now, as I’m not itching this little spot on my under-arm, I am imagining the rash came from a walk I took in the woods about a month ago. Trying to remember what I did a month ago is confiscating my remaining brain space. I’m trying to imagine I did not contract poison ivy in my own back yard when I did some minor yard work about a month ago. I’m trying to imagine it came from a very far away place that I will never visit again.

If the poison ivy is in my back yard, however, I’m doomed. I spent this entire weekend in the back yard, clearing and bagging up brush and miscellaneous vines. Which means, while I am currently suffering from a minor prior encounter with The Poison Ivy, I might just have been having a unknown rendezvous with a whole mass of it this weekend. I might just have spent the whole weekend in the idiotic stage. Which puts me in the blissful ignorance stage for the next month. Except right now it’s more like a horrifying fear of the hopeless utter confusion and torture stage.

There’s nothing I can do right now, I took a shower and washed all my clothes. The damage is done, and my brain is rotting from all the thinking about not itching, and remembering what I did, and fearing for the future, and promises to not even look at the back yard ever again.