Camping, as a 30 year old man, with buddies

Frank: “watch out, there’s some poison ivy back there”

Me: “I’m immune to it, it doesn’t matter.”

Frank: “Really?”

Me: “Yeah, I found out after I was the only person in my boyscout troop to not catch it after a hike. I can touch it as much as I want and not get a rash.”

John: “You know, you can lose the immunity.”

Me: “What?”

John: “Yeah, I heard it comes and goes at random times. You may not be immune anymore”

Me: “Only one way to find out.”

I disrobe to only my underwear and roll around in the patch of poison ivy I roll for minutes- to the distant eye, it looks like I was training everyone on what to do if they catch fire.

I stop rolling and stand up.

John: “You know- you could have just touched it, with your pinky.”

That never occurred to me.

▢▢

I once helped a friend move into his first house. We entered it, carrying his couch, reasoning that we should start immediately on the hardest task. It became stuck half way up the staircase. It took hours to unwedge it. We sawed inches off its legs. At one point we seriously considered lighting it on fire, to weaken it enough to break it and at least free the staircase. It was evening when we finally pushed it to the second floor and into his living room.

We saw the huge, easy-to-access door together. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon, or a great work of art- we were both silent –almost dumbstruck– and yet we knew exactly what the other person was thinking; the exact words that were going through his mind: “Jesus, this is why other people plan shit”.

▢▢

I felt that same sensation –the same experience of everyone reading your thoughts; of everyone realizing, immediately, there was a much easier way to do some thing– when I emerged from the poison ivy and heard, “you could have just touched it”.

Fuck. It hit me: “maybe I don’t have this immunity anymore”…  and, rather than learn this lesson like a normal person (in a small, controlled fashion), I just guaranteed myself two weeks of unimaginable pain.

▢▢

I am still immune. Not a single dot –not a single scratch– developed on my body. My friends and I then drank like I beat a cancer sentence, on that camping trip. It was an uproarious good time… Come to think of it- Tom and I finished a bottle of whiskey, after that move, and ended-up at a hilarious Caribbean themed bar in the middle of Ohio. We drank like we defeated that couch, rather than just moved it. It was great time.

Had we just gone around back (with the couch), we probably would have finished six hours earlier; shaken hands and called it a day. It would have been like any other afternoon.

Which is why –to this day– I proudly, never think. The stories are better. “Life is too short to think“, that’s what I tell people my motto is. It usually ends job interviews, at once, but for most things you want to get done on a weekend- it makes for a good time.