I walked out of the bathroom last night, in my snuggly p.j. bottoms and tank top, carefully daubing chalky pink calamine lotion on my arm. “You know, I just noticed something. I’ve had poison ivy WORSE in the last two years than I have since I was a kid.”
“Nah, hasn’t it always pretty much disfigured you?” The boy replied, not looking away from the video game he was playing.
“No, seriously, it’s gotten worse recently. Last year it was awful… remember how swollen it got?! I think Missouri has some different strand of it or something.”
“That’s because we’ve got more gumption here in Missouri.”
“What the hell does gumption have to do with it?”
“Because we’ve got GUMPTION! You gotta say it with emphasis, not disdainfully. We’ve got get up and go – when we do something, we DO it. That means barbecue, racial slurs, guns, and poison ivy.”
“All of the above, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Shit…..all we have in Illinois is corn, cows, and average garden variety poison ivy.”
“Jealous?”
“Not much. Mostly itchy.”
You know you’re from Illinois if…
you have tattoos of your home state on your wrist.
Poison ivy sucks. My dad said rub jewel weed on it. Do you have that? xoxo