Three Irrelevant Things

One: I have never had poison ivy.

Growing up, I attended camp many summers (thanks Mom & Dad!). One year at this one camp we were told "If you don't have poison ivy by the time you leave here, you don't get poison ivy." One by one my fellow campers would break out in a rash and troop over to the infirmary. They'd come back with the affected parts of their bodies slathered with calamine lotion. Those pale pink swatches of calamine over itchy blistering skin were worn like badges of honor. Badges that signified they were real campers.

I would inspect my arms and legs daily, waiting expectantly for my own itchy blisters to appear. They never did. I so wanted to be a real camper and have calamine swatches of my own, I actually rolled in a patch of poison ivy. How pathetic is that? But no rash. I'd not take such a risk these days.


Two: I have never broken a bone.

This story of me falling down? It is not an unusual occurrence. I'm clumsy. I fall down. Yet no matter how hard or how far or how awkwardly I may fall, I've always bounced back up no worse for the wear. (knock on wood)

I've never set out to try to break a bone. Has anyone? Well, anyone outside of that fellow who was trapped in the mountains and had to amputate his own arm to escape. Unless one was in a situation like that, it would be insane to try and break a bone. If breaking a bone were as simple as rolling in a patch of poison ivy, I may well have done it. But it's not, so I haven't. Instead I signed my friends' casts when they had them, bemoaning that I never got to wear one myself. Silly me.


Three: I have never been stung by a bee.

This one I almost achieved! One fall day when we were teenagers, my friend Molly and I were taking a cut-short through the woods. We stepped off the path a bit to smoke our cigarettes. (Yes, I was that kind of teenager!) We chatted and smoked unaware of the circumstance that would soon cause us to scream like the teenage girls we were.

One or both of us had disturbed a hive of ground-nesting bees. I remember looking down and noticing that from the crotch down, both of us were covered in bees. I was wearing sandals. My bare toes were covered in bees. We screamed. We swatted. We screeched. We flailed. We fled in opposite directions.

We found each other about twenty minutes later. Each of us had exited the woods and started walking the long way around. We met on the sidewalk of a suburban street, fairly safe from marauding insects. Ground-nesting bees do not make their home in concrete. Molly showed me three places she had been stung. My only wound was a tiny scratch from a branch recoiling as I raced through the woods. Bah.