Anytime a product is billed as an exfoliant and promises to remove an itching rash by “bonding with the poison oil and washing away with vigorous rubbing”, DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. This crap I paid $25 for yesterday did nothing but piss off the poison ivy I already had until it reached meltdown stage last night: this point was when my wife turned to me and said, “We have to…you know.”

Because my loving wife knows just how squeamish I am around needles, “We have to…you know” is code for Go get me a needle so I can heat it over a candle flame and pop the humongous boil that’s hanging off your forearm like a conjoined twin.

You see, this product contains little balls of plastic that are supposed to be there for scrubbing, like that soap with the sand in it that’s supposed to help with getting all the engine grease out from between your fingernails. The difference is that engine grease doesn’t get mad and expand like a Satan-posessed party balloon. There I am in the shower yesterday, praying that this crap will take the itching away, and I’m rubbing it into the blisters, and I felt like a dog when you hit The Spot—where the dog goes into uncontrolled fits of scratching and gets the faraway look in its eye. it felt SO GOOD to itch this stuff. I rubbed the crap in for the prescribed 30 seconds, and then washed it off carefully so as to not splash any of the poison oil on any sensitive areas, and then applied Step 2, which is a clear cortisone cream with the consistency of snot. Here was Clue Number Two. The $40 competing product claimed that relief would be immediate, while this shit had me immediately pouring some kerosene onto the brushfire.

So after “We have to…you know,” we both stood in the kitchen and mopped up the liquid that leaked out of my arm until it was normal-sized again, and again after it blew right back up to full angry size and we drained it again, and then a third time. (It was at this point I knew that I was destined to have children with this woman; I flashed back to the day I came down off the roof, having been stung by a wasp, and pointed my swelling hand at her, hopping on both feet like a kid who needs to go potty. She quickly made a potion of baking soda and water and put it on the sting, and it felt better in seconds. Our roles became clear: I will teach them how to shingle roofs, and she will teach them how to reattach their own limbs.) After the third draining it looked a little tired—all that anger wears a conjoined twin out, I guess—so we returned to the couch and our regularly scheduled coughing and hacking. Every once in a while I’d mop it with a tissue to make sure it wasn’t leaking into the couch, but it remained relatively quiet for the rest of the evening.

This morning I woke up and did the inventory: Cough? Check. Sore throat? Check. Mucus puddle in lungs? Check. Angry, freakish blisters covering forearms? Check. Except it’s even nastier, if you can believe this: it’s crusted over where it leaked out last night (I had it wrapped up in a sock) and still leaking.

I think that maybe discretion should be the better part of valor here, so today I’m going to spare my co-workers the sight of my conjoined twin attempting separation and the Black Lung. This shit is gross.