Poison Oak
From iGeek
Brazen Shamelessness
This is a video by me, on how I earned my superpower, with the help of poison oak and public humiliation in Junior High School
Short Version
The short version is:
- I was poison oak resistant (wherever I got it, I wouldn't get it again). Eventually, this eliminated places I could get it... until I managed to get it in the one place remaining (full frank and beans). Life lesson about public urination I assume.
- Turns out, mucous membranes and soft tissue really don't like the stuff, and swells to cartoon proportions. I go to the dermatologist with ginormous red genitals that would scare baboons (literally 3 x normal size).
- Doctors solution was to use a UV lamp to "dry things up", and industrial calamine lotion to take home. (Note to Dr. Stanowitz, if you're going to leave a 14 year old in the stirrups with a sun-lamp cooking his good bits, please close the door when you leave next time -- I had to put a towel over my face so no passers by would recognize me).
- 4 days later 9th Grade starts. And I remember after PE that showers are mandatory. No pleading would get me out of it, and the PE teacher intimidated me enough that I just went with it. Swelling had gone down to twice normal size, but the UV lamp works extremely well on places that don't usually get a lot of sunlight -- my body opted for dark brown coloring.
- If you're thinking that having a large black man's genitals on a 14-year-old boy would be a good thing, you'd be sorely mistaken. Not only did kids sprain their necks on the double-take checking out the mutant kid, but after that the girls that had heard the story would turn white and flee on seeing me in the halls. I became the pariah of Jr. High School girls, and seemed to always draw an audience when taking a shower. (After another week or so, the swelling was gone -- but the color lasted the rest of the year).
My life would have been a lot easier if Bathing Suits were an option.