Iron Will

When I was in grade school one of my favorite movies was Disney's Iron Will. The movie's about a teen, Will Stoneman, in 1917 whose father dies in a dog sledding accident. In order to save the family farm Will enters a long and brutal dog-sled race. He overcomes exhaustion, cold, dangerous terrain, and attempts at sabotage to eventually win. It was incredibly inspiring and informative to my young self. Helped shape my ideas of dedication, courage, and perseverance. At the time I had no idea of what the application of will power would actually look like in my daily life.

The summer after 4th grade I got poison ivy at summer camp. I scratched and scratched, it spread, I had it all up and down my arms and legs, in between my fingers and toes, all over. It was truly torturous. It got infected. By the time school started my right leg was twice the size of my left. We went to the doctor and I got on steroids and antibiotics which knocked it out pretty quickly.

For ten years after that I got poison ivy every summer. I became intimate with the rash, lovingly familiar with that cloying itch. It was the most powerful physical discomfort I ever experienced. I cultivated the ability to endure it because I found if I scratched it at all it would spread like wildfire across my unsuspecting frame.

Posion ivy is worlds more intense than a mosquito bite. There were times I thought I would go crazy, my mind unable to process anything save the ever present and all encompassing itch. But through practice, through detachment, and a tempering of my mental fortitude I was able to stem the ivy effects each summer to various degrees of success.

Battling poison ivy, my yearly nemesis, was the first real personal challenge of my adolescences. The first time I discovered what will was and how to apply it. I wasn't Will Stoneman in a dog-sled race battling fatigue, frostbite, and precariously frozen rivers but I was in my own protracted skirmish with Mother Nature. I was ever vigilant at the numerous summer camps I went to(and eventually worked at) for that three-leafed red-stemed monster. And when the inevitable rash came I took the itch between my psychic teeth and bit down. I persevered.