Poison ivy 1, Joe 0 -- game over

Don Quixote jousted with windmills because he thought they were giants.

I engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the wild hedge in our back yard because it is gigantic.

We both lost.

I don't recall if Quixote suffered any injuries that required medical attention.

I wound up sitting in the examining room of my doctor's office with a sheepish look on my face and swollen forearms covered with a raging poison-ivy rash.

Two prescriptions and a shot in the you-know-where later, I felt better. My improved condition was mostly psychological. I was relieved to know my arms weren't going to split open like overripe watermelons that roll out the back of a speeding pickup onto July-roasted asphalt.

(Sorry, dear readers, about the overly graphic description of my imagined fate. I didn't mean to make you choke on your Cheerios.)

What I should have done, my doctor said -- correctly assuming I'm too hard-headed to leave a wild hedge alone in the first place, was take a shower and wash all my clothes immediately after the hedge affair.

That's good advice. Good medicine. Good common sense.

But, Doc, if everyone adhered to sound medical information and the wits God gave us, you would be pushing Q-tips up the nostrils of wheezing puppies, which don't have any wits at all and cannot relate to medical gems of wisdom.

(Sorry again. I guess I'm in one of those Cheerio-chucking moods.)

No, it takes a right smart number of stupid idiots like me for the medical profession to stay a step or two ahead of the bill collectors.

OK. Here are some things I know enough about to be called an expert:

1. I am allergic to poison ivy like flies are attracted to road kill.

I don't even have to touch poison ivy. All I have to do is look at it, and before I can count up to three leaves I'm breaking out, sometimes in spots I can't scratch in public.

I have been poison ivy's victim as long as I can remember, but I can't ever remember having a rash this bad.

On the down side, everyone who sees my arms is immediately alarmed. Even my doctor gave me a gentle pat on the back as he left the examining room. He didn't want to shake my hand. Who can blame him?

On the up side, I have the best patch of poison ivy anywhere. I only wish there was some good use for it. Why haven't scientists figured out how to give high-protein food plants the ability to thrive in poor soil and drought -- like the indestructibility of crabgrass and poison ivy?

2. The hedge did not have to be trimmed.

I realize I have lost any sympathy you might have had for me up to this point. Whining about my rash now sounds like a golfer who says his back hurts and his sunburn is peeling.

The only place a golfer can get even a shred of commiseration is from another golfer or someone silly enough to attack a wild hedge with big wooden handled trimmers on a stifling Saturday morning during a July heat wave.

What lesson have I learned from my skirmish with a poison hedge?

That I have half a brain.

I base this astounding conclusion on one simple fact:

At least I don't golf -- not on a Saturday morning during a July heat wave anyway.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.