Summer is a cruel season.

Yes, I know most of us love it. I do, too — to a degree. (All 90-plus of them.)

But summer also can be dangerous to your health. Kids fall out of trees or off their bikes and break an arm. Somebody crashes his skateboard and sprains an ankle. A baseball goes astray, and the batter gets a black eye.

Earlier this week, my daughter came home from day camp with skinned knuckles she had scraped on the bottom of the pool. When I was her age, I nearly choked to death on a lollipop that lodged in my throat at summer camp.

Children aren’t the only ones getting beat up. Thousands of otherwise intelligent adults are injured every summer when they pour too much lighter fluid on the grill or stick their hand under the lawn mower.

In our area, the lakes are a hot-weather magnet but can be deadly. Inevitably, there’s at least one jet ski accident every summer — sometimes with tragic results. On a single afternoon last week, two young men in their 20s drowned in Hartwell Lake. One was thrown from his boat and hit his head; the other was swimming and stepped into unexpectedly deep water.

Luckily, most of our summer maladies are milder: sunburn and heat stroke; mosquito bites and wasp stings; the infamous “brain freeze” from eating a Popsicle too quickly.

Friday is the official summer solstice, at 7:59 p.m. Already, the season has been cruel to me.

First, I got poison ivy. Or poison oak. Or sumac. I’m not sure what it was, and I don’t know whether it was in the woods behind my house or on that hike we took in North Carolina. Whatever. I got it, and I got it bad.

My father was highly allergic to poison ivy. He was one of those people who breaks out in hives all over, after one quick, little brush of “leaves of three” against an arm or a leg.

Well, Dad, guess what? I’m your daughter. And I’m covered in ugly red bumps.

I think Ground Zero was my left ring finger. That’s where the rash started. But as soon as I started scratching the itch, the rash moved up my hand and arm. Then it jumped onto my torso, leaped to my other arm, crept down along my legs. Pretty soon I had welts on my cheeks and swollen eyes. A great look for all those summer pool parties.

I took an antihistamine, slathered on calamine lotion (that stuff stinks!) and cursed my hyperactive immune system.

Just when the itching was starting to calm down, my husband brought a nasty summer cold home from work and — thanks, honey! — gave it to me.

If you haven’t had a summer cold recently, let me remind you: They're worse than winter colds. Or fall colds. Or spring colds. Why? I don’t know. And my head is too stuffed up to think.

I only know that summer is cruel. So be careful out there.