Susan Senator

What the heck is it?! Every morning a new itchy bump shows up on my skin (leg, now arm, maybe even — God forbid — eyelid). Only itches in the morning, like a house on fire, then stops. Responds to cortizone. Ever since last Friday. The way the bumps show up after all the itching, the look of the thing, is my old enemy Poison Ivy. The summer is over! I have done no gardening for a month! So how did I get it?

Ah-ha! I rode to Nauset Light Beach at the National Seashore the one day it rained and left my bike (actually Dad’s bike, so sorry Dad!) in the bushes next to the ramp. (By the way, did you know that the National Seashore is actually a National Park, and that the National Parks let in disabled people for free! I was thinking about what it would be like to be a ranger from the National Seashore, at a party or conference of other National Park rangers. Do you suppose they have those kind of things? Can you imagine, there’s actually a “National Park” in my town: Frederick Law Olmstead’s house — that’s right, the Olmstead Homestead. He’s the guy who designed Central Park and Boston’s Esplanade, among other treasured landscapes. But still — imagine one of those rangers running into a ranger from some amazing natural wonder like Yosemite, Redwoods, Glacier, or Yellowstone. Here’s how the conversation might go:

“Hi! I’m from Yellowstone, where you find grizzly bears, hot pools, springs, spectacular geysurs, and miles and miles of mountainous beauty. So… where you from?”

At which point the Olmstead ranger would just mumble something and shuffle away.)

Anyway, I did not have a lock for my bike, so I figured I would not leave it in the bike rack, but rather, stowed next to the wild rosebushes, partially hidden, as if the rider were coming right back (she was, because she did not like to stay on a rainy beach, but she had to make sure two of her darlings were okay. One was swimming, in that gray soup, because he loves to swim, even in scary ocean water; the other was sitting on the blanket, eating snack after snack (Sun Chips! Soft-baked Pepperidge Farm Cookies! Sprite!) and never even dreaming of becoming fat. Can you guess who they were?)

The wild rosebushes. The are filled with all kinds of weeds. As Ned put it, “Do you think the National Park Service is going around spraying Round-up to kill poison ivy?” Drat those Environment Protectors! Now I have to go and visit Don Cortizone.