When you’re Irish and the potatoes have it in for you….
Ah potatoes, my favorite. Still just a mild intolerance, so I can eat them a few times a month.
I’ve never had a problem standing up to bullies or making my opinion heard if I need to (although frankly, some people need to stop sharing every opinion they have ever had), and I’ve had to punch my way out of a few situations so far in my 48 years (unfortunately). So imagine how it feels to have to ask someone if these green bits are parsley or chives? If it’s parsley, I’m dead. If it’s chives, yum. I’m so delicate (eye roll).
My stepmom made a comment once, after an altercation I had where I stood up for myself. “You’ve never been afraid of anybody.” This is true.
My favorite meme to send everyone when I’ve had a bad day.
Now, imagine being afraid of a bite of food, but not much else. It feels stupid because just a fraction of the population has to worry about it. I worry if something has “mushroom extract” now when it didn’t used to list that as an ingredient. I’m less afraid of a man trying to stab me than I am of parsley hidden in my food. Seriously, parsley = death and it might be the dumbest allergy ever.
I have always had sort of a hero complex, that run-towards-the-burning-building-and-save-everyone mentality, or that need to show some dirtbag that they can pick on someone their own size (when that dirtbag is bigger than me, probably). How many times did I have to take on that homeless man that used to come into the bakery? We knew he had an assault record because he punched a barista at the Starbucks down the road. One time he had a stick that he was swinging around, it was at least as tall as him, about six feet, and NONE of my male employees did anything to protect the people in the dining room. It’s always me — and I had to be ready to grab that stick AND fight him while I waited for the cops. My years of ballet training didn’t prepare me for this, but my Irish rage sure did.
If I warn you to back up, just back up. You got a warning. Some people heed it and others don’t and that’s just life. But I’m only warning you once, verbally. The second warning is Irish for sure.
Wonder Woman (and Linda Carter) taught me to be the hero.
The problem is that every instinct I have is built around confronting problems directly. If something goes wrong, I handle it. If someone is dangerous, I deal with it. If there’s a crisis, I move toward it instead of away from it.
Food allergies don’t work like that.
There’s no fighting parsley. There’s no “standing your ground” against a beet. The only winning move is avoidance, and avoidance feels completely unnatural to me.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but the food just isn’t important to me anymore. I don’t pick vacations because of the food. I don’t go to events because of the food. I don’t care about the food. I’m very certain I don’t want to die in public from accidentally eating something. That doesn’t mean I won’t go. It just means I ate before. I don’t avoid any of these events or invites, I just don’t bother eating. Even fully gluten free places pose a risk to me because of all the other food allergies.
So instead of fighting, I manage.
I research restaurants like I’m preparing for a federal investigation. I read menus in advance. I look up ingredients. I choose the item with the fewest possible variables. If I panic when I get there, I simply don’t eat. I’ll have a drink, socialize, and eat later at home.
Because despite all my dramatics, I actually do want to stay alive.
When I do take risks, I have rules.
Extensive research before the restaurant or the event. I need to know if I can drink something or if I should avoid even touching the table (hello regular pizza place with flour blowing around inside).
Never eat the pizza, even if it’s gluten free (corn, parsley, egg, cry face)
Choose the item with the least ingredients (salad no dressing/croutons or just rice).
If you panic when you get there, don’t worry, just have a drink and eat later. Your life will go on.
If I die from eating at a restaurant, my will states that my family cannot sue. I made that choice myself knowing that EVERY restaurant is a food allergy risk.
Whenever I break these rules, I suffer. Do I get mad about it sometimes? Sure. It sucks. I didn’t choose for my body to react like a psycho killer to food the same way no one chooses cancer as a life option. But this is the life that chose me and I do my best to still have fun, participate, and eat whatever is safe.
This rash was after too many tomatoes in one day. I have to rotate my foods, which is a part time job and involves charts.
As I’m writing this, a bag of cassava chips tried to murder me yesterday. And I ate those cassava chips, so is that attempted murder on myself? Now, I researched those chips, and I had them in the pantry for a week before I got up the nerve to eat them — it still went terribly wrong. I can’t figure out why they tried to kill me when everything looked fine, but I’ll just have to never eat those again. Avoidance is the only solution for me.
Which is unfortunate, because “avoidance” feels very un-Irish of me.
