Redartz: Greetings, all! We find ourselves nearing the start of the summer season. Hot weather, hot dogs, cool water balloons, and cooler ice cream; just a tiny sampling of the wealth that Summer has to offer. Of course, as bountiful as summer can be in providing entertainment and recreation, it also has some potential pitfalls. I'm sure all of us have experienced some of these, while pursuing our various warm weather diversions. I surely did (although I don't recall ever being injured while reading a comic under a tree on a sunny afternoon). Here's a couple examples:
Poison Ivy (the plant, not the character)- this nasty stuff is like kryptonite to me. When I was little, I'd love go out into the woods and explore, build forts, play spacemen, army and superheroes; you know the bit. Unfortunately those woods were home to that accursed plant, and many was the time I'd shortly come down with itchy rashes from head to foot. Some times so severely, I'd actually get hives on top of the ivy blisters. It was misery; and I still remember having to soak in those oatmeal baths.
Sunburn- spending so much time outdoors, it was only predictable that the occasional sunburn would result. The worst case: I was a teenager, and was working that summer at my first job (behind the grill at McDonald's). One afternoon I went out to play tennis, and neglected the sunscreen. Later that night I had to work, and about an hour after my shift started, OUCH. I started sweating, and shaking, and got so loopy in that hot kitchen I kept having to go back and sit in the freezer. It was a true summer nightmare..
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Well, there's a couple of those summer hazards. You can (and I hope will) come up with many more, from errant fishhooks to mosquito bites. Ah, but that's summer; you get the bad with the good!
