Sheets, Styrofoam, and Poison Ivy

(from August of 2020)

The other day, Memory looked at me and casually said “I changed the sheets this morning. Your side was brown.”

Styrofoam was invented in 1941. Holy shit was that a bad day for planet Earth.

The best part of Poison Ivy is better than anything.

(Yes, I will connect these dots.)

First, the horrific implications of the miscolored sheets. (It’s not what you think.). I take a shower when I come home from work, even when I don’t want to, and before I get into bed at night. If I don’t, I’ll hear noises from my partner until I shower. Granted, I’m filthy upon return from work every day. But, since I shower, and with soap, I can’t explain the statement except perhaps for some inadequacy of my showering procedure. If any young lady wishes to assist me in showering, please send me a recently dated swimsuit photo.

But the reason I get so dirty every day is that I work doing a range of ‘construction’ labor; I get tar on me from roofing, cement on me from concrete work, dirt on me from fence work, brush clearing, etc.

Among the many things I do is ‘clear lots.’ The first order of business in clearing an overgrown vacant lot is picking up trash. (Mom would be proud of me picking up trash in my little neon yellow vest and orange Bob The Builder plastic helmet). I do this in anticipation of mowing and brush clearing lots and tracts of land, and trash is less fun to pick up after shredding by a mower or weed-whacker. All these lots are adjacent to major roads and receive their trash decorations via ejection from vehicles. There is a remarkable consistency to what I find and I can rank the top items you will find in any lot. In ascending order of frequency, here are the top five things that get thrown out the window: 5.) Lottery tickets 4.) Assorted fast food trash 3.) Nips 2.) Styrofoam 1.) My respect for the human race.

Styrofoam is forever and is everywhere; presumably it will therefore be everywhere forever. Unless I pick it up. Sometimes it is hidden in deep grass, and hitting a styrofoam cup with a weed-whacker can elicit oaths and epithets of great imagination. Now there are a hundred pieces to pick up, and I’d better pick them up because they are white and can telegraph from a distance that someone didn’t pick up all the trash in this here vacant lot, though that someone was here in a cute orange and yellow costume with a little bucket and a ‘picker’ stick. This is a substantive issue, but the real issue is the environmental permanence: estimates of how long it takes for styrofoam to break down range from five-hundred to a million years! And, as mentioned, there is so much styrofoam in our lives—up to 30% of landfills are comprised of styrofoam. Folks, you will never have a greater impact upon the planet Earth than when you toss a styrofoam cup out of the car window. Don’t make this a thing in your life. And don’t get me started about styrofoam in the ocean.

By the way, who litters? What software download never happened in the souls of such people that they can drop or throw trash on the sidewalks, streets and vacant lots of our cities and just blithely go on about their lives? This needs a big bug fix, as does not using blinkers while driving. Who are these people that literally won’t lift a finger for the safety of others? (It’s a well-known fact that Hitler didn’t use blinkers and littered blatantly.)

On to poison ivy. Another treat waiting for me in every vacant lot along with the trash is poison ivy vines that crawl through the dense greenery like snakes in the Garden of Eden. Whoever invented this plant is no doubt celebrated in Hell, and has been given a seat of honor at the cafeteria there. Blasting through poison ivy with a mower and weedwhacker, and even hand-cutting big vines of it, is another price of admission to my job. We do it though, with alacrity and good cheer, all the while using various pharmacy products to reduce the chances of imminent misery. We fail in these mitigation efforts usually, and I’ve been carrying a case of poison ivy around with me all summer like bad breath. It is somewhat under control but for my forearms which are historically the most tender exposed skin and the place where most people get poison ivy first. Now, real poison ivy-getters, like myself and my twin brother Keith, are steeped in the misery of poison ivy from childhood but rarely get it nowadays as adults. I am excepted recently due to this new job and Keith probably hasn’t had poison ivy in 40 years but for that one time a couple of years back.

[In that case, Keith relapsed while dropping some weight in the woods due to a sudden signal from the bowels that caught him by surprise. As he squatted, he considered his wiping options and noticed some wide shiny green leaves all around him. Don’t get ahead of me. Using these beautiful soft leaves to take care of business, he then hiked his pants up and strode out of the woods pleased as punch. A short while later, and back at home, he found himself absently digging through his pants at his ejection port. After a couple of times, and a sudden escalation of itching urgency, he suddenly froze in realization. I cannot imagine the horror . It must have been bone cold. The rest of this story is too appalling for thought.]

Back to my forearms: Agony. Itching that cannot be sated; if not unconsciously scratching, one will suddenly give in to consciously raking the affected area over anything to relieve the itch! Alas, it makes it worse. But there was that couple of seconds of relief that reinforces the vicious cycle. For example, my work partner and I were fixing barbed wire fencing recently and got cut up in the forearms doing the work which was a bit complex and we were in short sleeve shirts due to the heat and often needed to doff the gloves for some intricate work. Each time we got bit in the forearms by the wire, which frequently drew blood, we’d joke about the upside that it at least scratched the poison ivy for a second. Incidentally, that same day I fell off the ladder and was briefly hung up on the fence by barbed wire stuck in my bicep until my work partner got me down. Unfortunately, there was no existing poison ivy rash where the wires stuck into my arm.

Now, as for poison ivy remedies, one thing Keith and I have known since we were children is that if you drill the affected area of poison ivy with a jet of very hot water in the shower, a magical thing happens. Let me describe it: First, upon the hot water first hitting one part of the rash, every nerve in your skin which has been affected lights up like blood spatter under luminol and a Blacklight at a murder scene. You instantly know every area that itches because it now longs for the heat and your skin starts to crawl as each bit of poison ivy rash climbs upon your brain to be rotated under the hot water. You begin to drill these areas and turn the water temperature all the way up. As each area is treated in turn, the itch is fully satisfied, then super-satisfied, and then rolling undulations of pleasure course through your entire body. Oh my God the hurt feels so good. At a point, the affected areas become insensate and your mind is flooded white and floating. Eventually, you’ll begin to feel the heat more than the bliss and you must withdraw. I would call the experience orgasmic but I don’t want to undersell it.

(By the way, I never asked Keith if he resorted to this procedure for relief from his incident in the woods and I won’t mention it here as I don’t want you to think about poor Keith bent over like that in the shower holding his ankles.)

So, what are the life lessons from my new job?

1.) Bathe thoroughly.

2.) Don’t litter.

3.) Pain and pleasure sometimes meet in secret. I’ve told you one place. There are others.