I’ve been wondering for a while where all these allergic kids came from too. Now when I was a kid (after the Stone Age, thank you very much) we had a couple of kids with asthma and then there was The Allergic Kid (so named because he was the only one we knew of who had permission not to eat certain things because he’d break out into hives — the rest of us had to eat everything we were given or else face a lecture) in my school, and this was in a populous city full of upper-class Jews and middle-class Hispanics, which were the only ethnic groups I knew of with these frailties. (Fun anecdote — I use that word since we are no longer allowed to call things we’ve observed in person in our own lives “facts” unless we have degrees in the subject on those facts and were engaged in an official study of those subjects: half the Cubans I knew were allergic to fish and shellfish. This was hilarious to me because Cuba is an island. When you go into a real Cuban restaurant — I mean where Cuban families eat, not where celebrities flock — in Miami you’ll find maybe one or two seafood dishes on the menu, one shrimp and one fish, and the rest is beef, chicken, or pork. And I knew quite a few Cubans who were allergic to corn and corn meal. Cuban cuisine is less heavy on the tamales and taco-like items than other Hispanic cuisines.)
Anyway, while I knew about food allergies and knew a few kids who had them, most kids were healthy eating machines with the normal likes and dislikes about foods that their parents generally ignored, because that food on that plate cost money, money didn’t grow on trees, and if they wanted dessert they were going to finish their beets or sweet potatoes or whatever else they didn’t like. And I can tell you one thing that was universally loved by every kid I knew and that was peanut butter. I think if I was a kid and I had developed an allergy to peanut butter, I would have gone into hysterics. Peanut butter and kids go together like… I don’t know, peanut butter and the emergency room do today, supposedly. I tell you what. I think the whole thing started with some parents who were sick of their kids asking for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner every goddamn day. “No honey, remember? Peanut butter makes you very sick. Yes it does, that wasn’t a cold you had last week, it was the peanut butter. The doctor says we can’t have peanut butter or peanuts in the house anymore.” And then it spread, until the peanut industry collapsed and thousands of people were thrown out of work, precipitating a worldwide economic depression that caused civilization to go into a tailspin, weakening the Western world so greatly that all of Europe fell to the New Islamic Empire and the United States was dissolved and carved up and divided between China and Brazil.
See? See what happens when you don’t give your kid his peanut butter sandwich? They’ll pry my can of Jif from my cold, dead fingers…
8 Responses to “All I wanted was a peanut butter sandwich”
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December 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I think peanut allergies first began to surface around the first week of November in 1976. I know I began to dislike peanuts not too long after that.
I got better.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 am
The ‘too clean’ theory gets my vote. In the stone age us kids played in dirt all the time. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the chicken coop, with the chickens, and eating the chicken pellets that could be picked out of the dirt and the chicken poo. Then there was playing in the dirt under the house, and in the dusty roof area. I don’t think I was atypical.
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:21 am
I think you’re right Brett. I read somewhere that the whole polio epidemic only happened because kids weren’t playing in raw sewage anymore. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in steel country and used to be outside in the filth constantly. None of these helicopter parents let their precious babies out of their sight anymore.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
So, when does the massive peanut-farmer and peanut-butter-making-company bailout begin?
(I just hope they don’t do something asinine like banning peanut butter to protect the allergic people from themselves. Peanut butter is one of the food-joys in my life.)
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:37 pm
“I grew up on the south side of Chicago in steel country and used to be outside in the filth constantly.”
Hey, nightwitch, me too. My dad worked at Wisconsin Steel.
Our favorite playing spots were railroad tracks and viaducts. They had everything–dirt, weeds, oil, grease, coal that fell off trains, standing water. All the good stuff.
And in addition to being little filth magnets, none of us had food allegies–not that I can remember. And even if someone was going into anaphylactic shock, our parents and/or the nuns probably would’ve told us to man up and walk it off.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
“Hey, nightwitch, me too. My dad worked at Wisconsin Steel.”
Small world! Did you know that the community Barry O “organized” was our old stomping grounds after Wisconsin steel went under? A right good job he did too, NOT.
“Our favorite playing spots were railroad tracks and viaducts. They had everythingβdirt, weeds, oil, grease, coal that fell off trains, standing water. All the good stuff.”
YES! We used to collect all the rusty used railroad spikes and any other bits and pieces.
“And even if someone was going into anaphylactic shock, our parents and/or the nuns probably wouldβve told us to man up and walk it off.”
Did you go to Queen of Apostles too? The nuns there were vicious.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Yeah, I had a good, long laugh about Barry helping all those poor steelworkers in the 1980s. The only person who helped my dad get part of his pension after Wisconsin Steel closed was a Republican from NW Indiana.
I didn’t go to Queens. I went to St. Mary’s. St. Mary’s had German nuns–you know, like the kind in the Sound of Music. π
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:24 pm
A friend of mine’s father had a railroad spike he brought down from New York. Her mother used it to tenderize meat.