I’ve finished one tub of pictures and have started on the second bin. (It looks as if there may be four of the blessed things.) I found this little gem in one of the shoe boxes.
I think I was about eight here, and my sister would have been three. (Possibly nine and four, but it doesn’t really matter.) Daddy and a close friend, a fellow we called Uncle Larry, had gone to my grandmother’s house to dig up maple saplings to plant at Uncle Larry’s new house. I was given strict orders to stay on the back porch and play with the dog.
Being the sweet, obedient child I was, I followed them into the field, and found some pretty, shiny leaves, with little white berries, which I collected into a small bouquet.
Poison ivy.
The doctor gave my parents medicine to put in the bathtub, and soaked me twice a day in water as hot as I could tolerate. I had it, literally, from head to foot – on my scalp and between my toes. My nose was swollen and covered with a yellow crust. My mom had to change the bed sheets twice a day, and after the actual poison ivy cleared up, I got boils all over my legs.
And it didn’t help that my sister was so d— smug about it, either.
thisendoftheswamp 
Oh my. My skin just shivered with the thought of so much poison ivy. I suppose the good takeaway is that you can survive most anything if you survived an onslaught of that. GAAK!
Don’t you love these photos? Do you think of the ivy or your gleeful little sis each time you look at it?
The poison ivy, actually. I was one sick chicken that summer. I’m still very sensitive to poison ivy, but The Squire and Local Grandson are totally immune. (The Squire is part Cherokee; apparently this is part of his DNA.) He has to disrobe outside when he has been working in the woods, and put his clothes in a plastic bag to take to the laundry, so I don’t get anywhere near the stuff.