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The First Time I got Ringworm
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I grew up up near the Gulf of Mexico.  That area gets a lot of big
tropical storms.

The houses in my neighborhood didn't sit on the ground, or have
basements, but instead, sat on little stacks of bricks to keep them up
high when it floods.

As a child, those storms were exciting!  Sure it meant no TV.  But it
also meant we could use the oil lamps, and no school, and everyone would
come out of their houses and check on each other, and usually, people
would share food because it would all go bad.

I remember I was about 13 or so when one storm hit.

My friend J and I walked around the neighborhood looking at all the
wreckage after one storm. We saw one uprooted gigantic live oak tree
after another. We felt sad but also amazed by the amazing power of
nature.

Another side note: I grew up around live oak trees and didn't know how
much I had fallen in love with them until I moved away and then saw them
again. They have trunks that can grow easily six feet thick and they
shoot off snaky twisty horizontal branches that are perfect for
climbing. They're beautiful, magical trees. They were almost like gods
to us.

Back to the main story. We got to a spot over by the warehouses where a
road went down and into a tunnel under railroad tracks.

This filthy underpass below a mostly unused freight railroad line in a
burned-out section of town was a place we had ridden our bikes through
hundreds of times. We had thrown glass bottles at the walls. We had
argued about what all the constantly changing graffiti meant. It was
ours. We had a claim to it because of all the time we spent there. But
now it looked totally different. A STOP sign just barely stuck out from
the water.

We got on the railroad track bridge and walked to the center. We had
never done this before. It didn't seem like to us that any trains were
running. The whole city was pretty much shut down after all.
I remember us standing on the railroad and daring each other to jump
into the flooded water below. We walked back off the bridge. Then J ran
into the flooded water. I watched him swim out to the sign.
Seeing J floating by the sign, looking so damn proud, I charged into the
water and swam out to him.

Later, when I got back home, still soaking wet, my dad surprised me by
how angry he got. He told me to go shower off immediately and use a lot
of soap.

My dad never got angry. He was always grim. Like somebody being tortured
for information but not giving in.

But this was one time where he was agitated.

He said that the underpass was likely full of raw sewage. There could be
water moccasins in there too. That's a venomous water snake.

A week later my skin broke out with crusty circular rashes. Back at
school, I told people it was leprosy. It took a few weeks of putting on
ointment before the rashes went away, but otherwise, I was fine.  And it
was all worth it. All these years later, I still clearly remember J and
me treading water, grinning at each other, and holding on to that STOP
sign together.

It was exciting to see the underside of the railroad bridge so closely
and hear the roaring noise from all the water pouring in from the
overwhelmed storm drains. I remember how it felt to swim with clothes
and shoes on. I remember shivering because the water was pretty cold.
This felt so adventurous though.

Definitely worth a few weeks of ringworm.