You bet your red shiney hiney

Living in the rural areas of Knox County has it's advantages, like quiet, country living, fields, creeks, ponds, barns, and plenty of places for kids to have fun. But, along with all of the great stuff, you also have the bad including snakes, hornets, chiggers, and poison ivy.

The poison ivy pictured over to the left, is growing along my fence row. It doesn't bother me, but my wife and kids avoid it like the plague. I have always been one of the lucky ones when it comes to the itchy stuff. I can pretty much jump in the middle of it, roll around, and never get one single hint of a rash. Others aren't quite as lucky, such as my cousins Randy and Jerry. Read on...

I remember, way back in the day, when a bunch of us kids were out living it up in the woods behind my Granny Spencer's house. We were playing Hide 'n Go Seek, Ghost in the Graveyard, Red Light/Green Light, and all of those other games that poor kids play. Of course, being out in the woods far away from the house when nature calls, we would all find our own tree to hide behind to do our business. Now, we weren't like the Charmin bears with our own toilet dispensers handy at the tree. No sir, we looked around for the closest thing, usually the biggest and greenest leaf that you could find. What luck we had, the area that we were in was filled with these big, shiny, green leaves, just perfect for the business at hand!

The next day, I returned back to Granny's house eager to play again. For some strange reason, none of my cousins showed up to play. Later on, I overheard my mother and my aunt June talking about how terrible Randy and Jerry's hind-ends looked. I heard the words "swollen," "red," "blistered," "itching," and "crying" several times during their conversation. I know it was wrong but I couldn't help but snicker at their misfortune and, of course, I had to run and tell my sisters all about it!

If you are not as poison ivy resistant as I am, you may want to check out this link for lots of good resources concerning identifying, preventing, and treating the itchy stuff.