I learned to identify poison ivy at a very early age. I seemed to be especially

[Igel]

5. I was the kid who, like you, broke out from the merest contact.

I could pick up something that somebody who'd pulled up poison ivy wearing gloves had picked up and just moved, before setting it down on the workshop bench. The next day my palm would break out from poison ivy. One day walked through the smoke from a fire where somebody had dumped poison ivy. Where the smoke could reach, I broke out. Scalp, behind ears, eyelids, inside of nose. Hurt like hell. Don't know how much calamine lotion I had caked on me at any given time.

I avoided the plant stuff--not too much of a problem until I was almost 12 and joined the Scouts. Then we were out camping and hiking a lot, and it was a major perceived threat.

Then, one day when I was 13 or 14 and out hiking with my patrol, this one idiot decided it would be funny to push me off the path--into a thicket of the stuff. This was Maryland, you could get patches of poison oak. We were at least an hour away from any place I could scrub, and of course we were wearing t-shirts and short pants. Nothing to do, I grabbed some and shoved it in his face.

Next day, nothing. (The other guy had a bad rash.) I tried touching it to a bit of my arm--and nothing the day after that. Rubbing it on my arm? Nope. No effect. Should have known--I'd been allergic to fur and feathers, but the allergy just vanished when I was in 6th grade.

After that, if any poison ivy/oak was in the way of hiking, in our yard, whatever, I was one of the people who would be responsible for moving it, hacking it, pulling it up. (My mother shared this odd trait--not allergic to something that pretty much as a human we should be allergic to. And my son's the same.)

The point is that for years I was deathly afraid of this stuff and gave it wide berth, all the more terrified because of the incident where most of my upper body was covered in the rash. I continued my paranoia long after it was no longer a threat. Sure, from time to time I'd accidentally touch some, but race to where I could scrub the area. It just happened I was always in time and scrubbed hard enough to get the offending allergen off of me. At least that's the story I told myself--it wasn't that the poison ivy wouldn't hurt me, it's because I followed the best advice and my actions kept me safe.

There's a middle ground between fear and cockiness.