Three friends and I were walking near the beach and two of my friends thought it would be funny to push me over as I was taking a picture. I saw that I was surrounded by poison ivy. I was furious, and immediately went down to the ocean to rub water and sand all over myself. My friends came over and apologized; they didn’t know what poison ivy looked like. I chilled out and laughed about it.

I got home and played with my 7-year-old cousin and went to bed. The next morning I had a few tiny, itchy welts on my arm. Didn’t I wash myself in the ocean? I was confused.

My cousin woke up with a rash on his hands, neck, and face. My mom said that he had been playing in a part of the yard that had poison ivy the day before and had already spread it to his mom and sister. When I played with him, swinging him around by his arms and flipping him over, I had gotten the poison ivy all over myself. Sure enough, a few days later I was broken out pretty badly. I guess you can’t be careful enough.