Pick Your Poison

 We have poison ivy all over our yard.  I used to get into it and spend every single summer with weepy scabs on some part of my body.  My dad thought the poison ivy was pretty, especially in the fall, and he didn't want to hurt it by ripping it out, so we never got rid of it.  It's true, poison ivy is pretty.  Its groups of three leaves (Leaves of three, let it be!) are waxy-shiny, and the colors are vibrant when they turn in autumn.  Every time we walk past the poison ivy on our way to my parents' house, I point it out as it grazes our shins and faces.

And every time, all the kids completely ignore me.  So it's actually shocking that we got this far without a poison ivy outbreak.  At the big party Sunday, a bunch of the kids roamed deep into the gully.  From the looks of Freestone's face (and Jake got it too), he remembered the cautionary poem as "Leaves of three, rub it all over your face."

I suspected poison ivy Monday at Lagoon as Free's cheeks got progressively more rosy.  I chalked it up to the excitement of the roller coasters and crossed my fingers.  But then he woke up with his face twice its normal size Tuesday.  He was too hideous to go to school.  People wouldn't have recognized him. 

I took him to the doctor.  The assistant took us into an exam room, sat down at the computer monitor and said, "So.  What are we seeing you for today?"

I shook my head.  If she had just put a modicum of effort into her job, maybe glancing at the patient, she would have asked a more informed question, such as, "Dude, what happened to your face?!"  Let's say she was just being delicate.

With prescription steroids, a topical cream and Benadryl (our doc doesn't mess around), Freestone was deflated enough to go on his school field trip this morning.  When I woke him up at 6:15, he was mad that I hadn't woken him up earlier.  I told his violin teacher that he was mad that he didn't have time to mentally prepare for the field trip before he arrived at his violin lesson.  Surprisingly, he was able to pull it together and have a good lesson before I dropped him off at the Frontrunner station to ride trax into Salt Lake.  He had no idea what they were doing for the field trip once they got to the big city, which is fine with me.  Surprises are good, right?  I'm just glad Freestone didn't have to go on trax all puffed up.  Someone might have thought he was a deployed air bag.