I’m allergic to poison ivy.  As far as I know, it’s my only allergy, and it visits me every summer and every fall, especially in my work.

I typically do little in terms of treatment.  A few years ago, I outdid myself. I was trying to get some tile lines installed ahead of a rain.  I kept limping a long, thinking I had seen the worst of it, and each day served as a reminder that I hadn’t.

I finally went in, after I got the job done, and found relief in a bottle of steroids and a shot.

A week ago, working on another summer project, I woke up with my eye half shut and a few welts on my ankle, wrist, and forearm.  The eye was my right eye, and I can’t close it without closing my left.

Folks are blessed to be able to do all kinds of things blind. Installing drainage tile isn’t one of them.

So I went to a clinic.  The doctor recommended a shot.  Bourbonm? I asked.  She said she had something stronger.

A few minutes later, the male nurse that had ushered me back to the exam room to begin with, reappeared.  He had latex gloves, a syringe and bottle, and a female nurse in tow.

I’ll admit, I wondered what she was doing there.

“Okay,” he said, “this shot will need to go into your gluteus maximus.”

“Your butt,” the female nurse replied.  Perfect, I thought.  A translator.

“I’m going to need you to drop your pants and hike your shirt up so I can get to the top of that muscle,” he continued unfazed.

The female nurse, Johnny-errr-Jenny on the spot, recommended I bend over the exam table and grasp it with one hand.  Placing my hand as instructed, I tried to maintain some level of decency with the other, keeping my shirt hoisted without letting all modesty fall down around my ankles.

At that exact moment, there was a knock on the exam room door.  At first, I was too busy to worry about it, but that quickly changed when I heard the male nurse confidently say, “Come on in.”

I stood and turned with my pants undone, and a look of ‘are we serious here, Clark?’

“So I just wanted you to know that I tried to check him out,” nodding to the patient with the unbuckled belt and open fly, “but I couldn’t get it to print, so you guys will have to print his checkout papers when you are done,” the second female in the room said.

“Can do,” said the chipper game show host of Who’s Ass is this Anyway?  “Sorry about that,” he turned to me and offered.

“No problem,” I inexplicably said in return.  “Is there anyone else that would like to come in?  If they’d like, I could jiggle it for a dollar.”

$53.13 later, after my copay, a couple senior discounts, and a severe leg cramp, I left on the road to better health.