It's a little bit funny
The wife and I played Ultimate Frisbee last winter during their "Winter League". (We live in Texas were winter is more a state of mind than an actual season.) In the excitement of trying something new and the desperation of wanting to belong I signed up for the Dallas ‘community' Ultimate Yahoo not long after experiencing my first pickup game/practice.
This means I receive emails about said pick-up games, the odd tournaments and the occasional 'cat/dog needs home' or 'need to sell blah-blah-blah'. I also get, every Thursday, a rather long email that up until recently I had totally ignored. Reason being is that I can't be bothered to actually read something over a page long from a Yahoo group that I don't really participate in. Until one day, when out of curiosity I imagine, I decided to give it a go. Being somewhat influenced by a recessive memory of my wife telling me I should read them because they're funny.
I just finished reading one of these ‘Thursday e-mails' a moment ago, this one was about poison ivy, and it struck me. No, the email didn't hit me. The thought occurred to me that I'm reading a really long, nonsensical email; which, in reality is a really elaborate invitation to go drink beer at a quasi-local bar, from a guy I don't even know, from a group I don't really participate in and I'm enjoying it. I even look forward to them now.
I just thought it was odd, but they really are funny and quite cleverly written. Click on the extended thinggy to get the most recent example.
Poison Ivy Thursday
Let me tell you… the poison ivy was glorious today. Magnificent, really.
No, no… I didn't tango with it. I just admired it from afar. Well, not really afar – I was close enough to high five the stuff, but not touching it was afar enough for me.
Just south-ish of the Las Colinas Polo Fields, you can encounter veritable acres of this lovely plant. All you can eat.
Poison ivy was primarily put on this planet to invade any plot of soil it darn well pleases, and if you don't bid it a respectful "good day," it likes to inform you about a day later that you did indeed cross its path. A bit wanting emotionally, dontcha think?
But the plant is so giving as well. Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac all have this wonderfully bothersome chemical called urushiol (you-ROO-she-ol) that it will gladly dole out. As much as you want. You just have to coax it a little.
The chemical is located within the plant – inside all of the friggin' plant as it turns out – so one could actually playfully bat around an odd ivy plant without getting so much as a pimple.
In theory.
Seems that the poison ivy is more fragile than the French military, so its cellular walls will gladly cave at the sign of a threat or dirty look and release the nasty oil within.
Well, maybe not that fragile. But still, it doesn't take too much.
Oddly, it seems that I get poison ivy way more frequently down here that I did back home in Pennsylvania. At home I could swan dive into ocean of ivy and come away with barely a blotch. Down here the ivy appears to have some sort of vendetta against man and woman alike.
Being that the ivy cellular walls are about as strong as a soap bubble, I wonder if the sweltering Texas heat has anything to do with coaxing some of the nasty ooze out of the plant. Most of the other plants in Texas are built not only to survive but to annoy as well.
(This reminds me of the first week I spent in Texas. Mesquite trees, to me, look sort of weeping willow-ish. Never having been formally introduced to a mesquite tree, I figured that they were just as soft and fluffy as a weeping willow. One day I was reaching out of the passenger window of a pickup truck plucking leaves from whatever I could grab as we lazily rolled down a long ranch road. And then I officially met a mesquite tree. The soft and fluffy image I had of this tree was quickly changed as I struggled to push a three-inch mesquite spike back through my hand.)
Regardless, what can you do when the ivy reaches out and grabs you? Well, if you wait a while, not a whole helluva lot.
The smart thing to do would be to shower within two hours. Soap is oil's natural predator, and can defeat the urushiol if you can get to it in time. If you leave urushiol to its own devices, it clings to you like a jilted girlfriend. It binds to your skin cells and causes your immune system to go nuts in that area.
By the way, I said that the urushiol "binds" to your skin. Once you have washed the infected area, you CANNOT give poison ivy to someone else. The urushiol is literally stuck on you. The only way a human can give another human poison ivy (aside from tossing a rake-full of the stuff at them) is to touch them while you have some unbound oil on you. And hey, misery loves company.
So once you develop an oh-so-delightful rash, there's not much you can do. But you can shorten its sojourn on your flesh. Unless you really like to scratch… and sometimes scratchin's fun.
There are all kinds of lotions and salves on the market; there are steroid pills and shots; but my favorite is simply to spend some time in a chlorinated pool. Seems that the blisters that the ivy loving imparts don't like chlorinated water much, and they tend to dry up faster than just leaving them alone. And if I remember right, salt water will do the same. I have also heard of spraying bleach on the infected area, and almost always I hear of the associated pain that sidecars with it. I don't recommend the bleach.
Well I don't recommend the bleach to most everyone. If you annoy me more than poison ivy, I highly recommend it. Heck, bleach is cheap… Go to Sam's Club where you can really get gallons of it for relatively little wampum.
Naw… I'm just kidding. Don't try it at home anyway. Try it where we can see you and really get a good chuckle as you zoom about the place like a scalded dog.
Oh, please...
So speaking of treatments, come throw some medicine on your liver: