Monday, July 17, 2006

Poison Ivy vs Me... German-style

My feet are currently full of tiny, swollen, red bumps. I counted, I have 40 bug bites between my 2 feet. Someone recently asked if I had poison ivy. I don't, but this did make me think of a time when I did have it...

I was 16 years old and an exchange student in Germany. We had been living with our respective host families for a few weeks. We were leaving our families to take a tour of the rest of the country via train. (A very cool way to travel if you ever have the chance.)

The sons and daughters of our host families were all friends and decided to throw a farewell party for us the night before we were set to leave. The temperature was hot and muggy. Everyone, including myself, was wearing shorts. The party was in the back of an auto dealership, next to a small river. With the theory that if I only drank from the glasses of others, then I would not consume enough beer to become intoxicated, I completely over-indulged.

At some point I decided that I wanted to go swimming in the river. I ran to it and was about to jump in. One of the other exchange students, a friend of mine from high school, grabbed me and held me back. I fell down into the water's edge, rolling myself in the grass. She told me that I had to go back to the party... and I did with no further incident.

The next day, as we were piling on to the train, I learned that the water's edge was full of poison ivy since I was covered in it from head to toe. This makes the whole traveling-via-train-with-no-air-conditioning-in-July thing a delight! One more thing, the "water" was not so much water as it was sewage. Thank goodness that my friends had stuck to drinking only their own beverages.

Amazing what a little beer and a theory can do to a teenager.

5 comments:

Elbow said...

That was a good friend...or was it? Think about it...sure it would have really sucked diving drunk into sewage, but that story could of went from good to epic had you followed through with your desired goal.

Anonymous said...

Oh the stories that you hear when your children are grown and on there way in life. Only to be young a foolish once more.
AE

Mrs. Starman said...

AE... The only thing that I will tell is that I have grown up. Sometimes I wonder how I got to be so lucky as to not get into more trouble, but here I am.

Anonymous said...

I seem to remember the night in question. If everyone knew the whole story...lol...somethings we will never tell our folks!

Glad to find you.

Bad Morning Sour Head!

Love ya, Melissa

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah....e-mail me some time... melissaw@lanshc.org