Rules for Traipsing: a) wear long pants; b) wear socks and shoes. He had a sensible respect for poison ivy and ticks, and this was and is the only sure way to avoid them. I have possibly had one tiny poison ivy blister in my entire life and am mostly convinced that it is a simple matter not to touch the stuff and thus never get the rash. Landscapers working with unavoidable amounts of brush and Losties running from scary island-dwellers through thick vegetation are free to differ with me on this.

In addition to protective gear, my father made sure we knew exactly what this leafy menace looked like. He would walk us through the woods, quizzing us on tricky lookalikes until we could easily identify the right plant. Poison ivy has dark green, pointy leaves in clusters of three; the stems are woody. When my brothers and sisters and I went into the woods to build forts or dig traps for “bad guys” or pee* or hide from each other, we kept one eye on the ground to make sure we weren’t walking through anything itchy.

It worked; I can’t remember any of us having any serious outbreaks of poison ivy. This makes me curious about people who are “more susceptible” to it. I have to fight the “Well, DUH!” reaction when I see a friend is covered in Calamine lotion and wearing oven mitts. Did he not have the benefit of a rural education? Did no one else learn, “Leaves of three: let them be!”?

This is how my father lives. He has experienced acute poison ivy, and so has learned to prevent it, and he makes sure that we, too, are educated and able to avoid unnecessary suffering. He rarely calls to chat, but will do so to make sure we have the best directions for the trip we’re about to take. A few weeks ago, this happened en route to my brother’s soccer game in deepest, stickiest Virginia. I wanted to break in to tell him we have iPhones now; there’s no need for your silly phone books and atlases and Boy Scouting, but I dutifully recorded the county roads numbers and landmarks. And so we weren’t late or lost or ill-tempered about being so. Google’s map would have landed us a good five miles away.

My instruction in the proper cleaning of cloth diapers, log cabin construction and reloading of rifle cartridges is a topic for a future post or two, but you can bet there’s a careful and intelligent system to each, according to Dad.

*Yes, we had indoor plumbing. For some reason, we didn’t want to break up the party by running inside and risking exposure to chores, so we designated a “business area” in the woods. Don’t judge.

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