itchin

Okay so last week I lost my favorite disc, a champion valkarie that was nicely tie-dyed and weighed 172 grams. I threw it into some deep woods at Bud Hill in Memphis, and do not expect to hear back from it any time soon (the search party carried on courageously, but to no eventual avail.) Wherever that disc lies, this is not where the story is found. This part is only to give you the vital background info, which is essentially that I lost a nice disc.

So I returned from my tour of the southeast last week and was ready to spend some time on the lovely disc golf course here in Little Rock, namely Burns Park. So last Sunday I bought a replacement disc that was pretty much the same as the old one, with brighter colors. On the blue course, the five hole is a little nasty. It goes sharply downhill immediately, and then about 340 feet to the hole which lies across a small creek. The trick is that theere is a fence running the length of the hole about 25 feet to the left. That proximity and the downhill element add up to a great chance that if you hand your disc at all, it WILL go out of bound acrss the fence, and come to rest somewhere on the hill between the fence and I-40. Therefore my amigos here refer to the hole as the stove, because as the old adage goes, "I can tell you that it's hot, but you won't believe me until you touch it for yourself."

So of course I throw the brand new disc and it goes over the fence and onto the hill, which I should probaably go ahead and reveal is both obscured from view from the launch pad and is covered with plant life such as honeysicle, thorns, and other plants which of course factor into the story more directly. But at this point, what I'm saying is that I lost track of the disck nearly as soon as it crossed the fence, and knew it was going to be hard to find.

I told my friends to leave me at the stove, and I spent the next half hour wandering throught he waist high plants, searching diligently for my plastic. Fortunately, in the course of my search, I found two other discs, and then my original one. Unfortunately, I also found enough poison ivy to light me up for the last week and a half.

And so I itch.

I itch crazily and mildly, and for a few short moments, not at all. I have applied two different cremes, ingested steroids and two different antihistamines orally, and accepted a needle full of the steroids in the posterior as well. I have bathed in oatmeal, taken cold showers for a week, and set the thermostat at 40 degrees. I have refrained from playing outside to keep from getting hot, and I have tried not to scratch. I have slept in the spare bedroom to keep from waking my wife by tossing, and still I itch.

I even shaved my freakin' legs.

And I still itch.

The rash has died down considerably, and hopefully will completely fade in the next two days. Hopefully.

I gotta go, it's time to scratch.