'Poison Ivy...Not all it's cracked up to be"

A friend of mine told me the best story. I wish I could video tape her and just stick her on here telling it. It would be way better. She tells stories with her hands and her eyes and every once in a while she shares something that seems so absurd I laugh out loud.

When my friend,Kate (we're going to call her that), was a preteen she and her childhood friend decided they had had enough school for their liking. It was the end of the year, they were bored, they wanted an escape from school. Now most normal, not so creative, kids would have faked the flu. Not Kate, Kate takes a more drastic approach. Her plan.....Her approach.....POSION IVY.


Yep, you read that correctly, poison ivy. One pretty Sunday afternoon, Kate and her accompolice sneak out of church, run behind the building, pick the three leaved shiny plant, and begin to use it like they are in a soap commercial. They scrub it all over their legs. They scrub it all over their arms (this is the part I wish you could see her tell). They were thorough to say the least, like applying sunscreen they didn't miss a spot. Needless to say, they got their wish. They did get an escape from school, from the everyday dulldrums of life. Unfortunatley, this escape was accompanied by legs swollen to the size of tree trunks, eyes that rivaled those of a not so victorious prize fighter, and two furious, unsympatheic mothers.

Kate ended this great story with the simple words, "Yep, poison ivy. It's just not all it's crack up to be.

After I was finished giggling for several minutes, I began to think about the story and my first thought of "What were you two thinking" soon morphed into "I know exactly what you were thinking." I know because I too have chosen, on many occasions, to take a romp in the poison ivy. In reality, Kate's story, although ridiculous, is much more common than any of us would like to admit.

To explain, there is a TV show I shouldn't watch. It has drama, it has action. It has extremely good looking, sensitive brooding men, who share their feelings, run after the girl of their dreams, and always end up saying just the right thing. When I do watch it, I get sucked in. But, then the hour is over, my husband walks in the room, and all I can come up with is "Hmm, this is it."

You see, after watching such silliness, such fantasy, life will never measure up. For goodness sake, I have three children, I have been married for quite some time, I brush my teeth with the same guy every night. I love my husband; I like my husband, but the poor guy doesn't stand a chance against the fantasy world of Mr. Perfect Hair, and his friend, Mr. Perfect Jaw. Case and point, the show is Poison Ivy. It seems like fun, just a simple escape, that is until the little bumps start to appear, until I start to get itchy for something more. If I decide to believe the fantasy lie propogated by the show, those little bumps, those tiny itches could so quickly turn into a full blown raging case that no lotion will cure. We have all seen this happen, perhaps some of you still have scars from such a thing.

Some of you may not be allergic to that particular strand of poison ivy, yours may come with shiny leaves of gossip. Perhaps you enjoy telling or hearing a good story. It's not until you get home and look at yourself in the mirror, or perhaps see the person who your gossip has victimized that you start to feel the sting of it, that the poison ivy turns from something you thought was harmeless to something that is going to stick with you, or even worse, someone else for quite some time.

Who knows, maybe you are suseptible to the kind of ivy that comes in the form of an angry tongue. Perhaps in the heat of the moment you say whatever comes to your head. Perhaps you tear those you love to pieces with your tongue and it feels justified and freeing. It's the release that you need. It's only when you realize words can never really be taken back that you start to see the ugly blotches on your face.

Perhaps your allergy, sort of like my TV show, comes in the forms of relationships, poison ivy with skin and a masculine name, someone who seems exciting, sensitive, new. So many of us are susceptible to this one. It's the shiny leaf that says there is something better out there. Someone who will fill a void, bring back feelings you once knew. This particular case of poison, though no more wrong, no more sin than the others, tends to leave the biggest scars. In my own life I really work to draw a huge line around this type and then stay about 100 yards from that line. I give myself some serious space. I do this because one day, on a bad day, I just might trip.

As I write this, I think of Eve in the garden or David on the roof top watching Bathseba. I'm guessing neither of them took the time to really think about where their actions would lead, what hurt would come from messing with such dangerous things. Like my friend Kate they were just looking for an escape, for somethimg more. I also think of myself and the hurt I have caused in my own life by messing with things I know full well I am allergic to, things that will never deliver, things that will only bring hurt.

Maybe sometimes you sit in church looking all put together but on the inside you are dreaming about just sneaking out back and rolling around in your own cluster of poison ivy. Maybe you just want to escape for a bit, just rub a little bit on yourself to test the waters. If you are like me and you know which things you are most allergic to, I implore you to draw a line around those things and then stay far far away. Be like my husband, who is so allergic to ivy that he won't even cut the grass. Be like him, Be Safe. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can play near it, play on the edge of it, or just touch a little bit of it. You can't; so please don't. You are worth more than ivy can ever offer, your face is to pretty to mar it up with such a rash. Plus no one, and I do mean no one, looks good with swollen tree trunk legs.

In the words of my friend, "Poison Ivy, it's just not all it's cracked up to be."