A Seat for One at the Peanut-Free Table
On June 29, 2022, I ate Nutella by accident.
As someone with a nut allergy, this was a pretty big deal.
I was at the final showcase for my internship at Condé Nast. Before the festivity began, a lovely platter of food arrived for us all to indulge in as we mingled with parents and fellow interns.
Picture it. Twelve other New York City high schoolers like myself in our most fly outfits scatter across the room to talk with one another alongside an array of journalists, photographers, and professionals from Condé Nast brands, as the sunshine from this beautiful June day pours in through the window. As we all sit in excitement for what the rest of the night will hold — presenting our final magazine projects to everyone — we can't help but laugh and jitter with excitement, stuffing down our fears with tiny cheeseburger sliders and mini buffalo wings.
In my flowy blue romper, I chat with others across the room when my fellow interns, Surina, Clementine, and Z, call me over and invite me to the bathroom to take mirror selfies. Balancing the joy in my heart and mini snacks on my plate, I hurry over to the food station, grab a cinnamon churro, and drizzle it with what I assumed to be chocolate. Churros and chocolate. Match made in heaven. The sugary snack kept me afloat when my family and I went to Spain for Thanksgiving last year. Now that I have another treat on my plate, I chomp down on the churro and inhale the sweet chocolate. Then I grab my friend Bella, and we both walk to the bathroom to indulge in our mirror selfie ritual. All is right in the world.
After our session of strutting our hips to the side, clustering as one, and smiling from ear to ear as we took selfies with one another, we all went back to mingling when I suddenly felt a scratchy sensation on my tongue. It felt like my tongue was a rug, and someone kept repeatedly wiping their dirty rain boots across the surface. Uh oh. I know this feeling.
I am having an allergic reaction.
Before I could even begin to think what food caused this response, my tongue began to thicken as it now felt like a gremlin was taking its bony hand and gnawing away at the tender body of my beloved mouth. Immediately, I ran out of the joint space we were all in and into the gallery room, now empty, where the presentations would soon take place. I hurried to find my New Yorker tote bag. I threw aside my Glossier lip gloss and new read, all about love by bell hooks (which unfortunately does not have a chapter on how to love your body which acts as both enemy and victim) to find my allergy kit with my beloved Benadryl liquid gel pills: allergy and relief medicine for Adults & Children.
Swallowing one pill was not enough. I had to quickly use my short nails to poke through the tinfoil packaging encasing the medicine to pop another into my mouth.
Shuffling out of the gallery room, where I'm sure I looked like a fluttering blue butterfly on the outside while my insides were on fire, I ran to find my mom. "Mommy, I'm having an allergic reaction," I said, and her eyes popped out of her skull. "We need to go to the bathroom."
So we ran to the bathroom, and for the next five minutes, my mom looked over at me as I rinsed my mouth with water spewing from the bathroom sink, even as it shut off every five seconds since the sink was motion-activated. The remnants of my churro and brown chunks of the sauce clouded the sink, but my tongue felt plump and whole again. Benadryl was doing its job.
As someone allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, mustard seeds, sesame seeds, dogs, and uncooked eggs, there were a million different things I ate that day that could have triggered this allergic reaction. But there was no time to dwell on the culprit of my swelling tongue. My throat did not close, and I could breathe freely again. Instead, it was time to enjoy the showcase and present all the hard work I had put into this internship during the last year to the public.
The night danced on, and it wasn't until after all the compliments from journalists praising my group on the magazine we created that I realized what caused my body to strike into allergy defense mode.
It wasn't a chocolate sauce that I drizzled onto my churro — it was Nutella.
I couldn't help but laugh. Thank goodness I had only eaten a crumb of the churro with a dab of Nutella. If I had devoured the entire sweet treat like I wanted, I would currently be in the hospital gasping for air.
I have a severe allergy to all kinds of nuts. Swallowing a nut could cause my throat to swell like a balloon, where someone must jab my knight in shining armor, sir EpiPen, into my thigh to give me a chance at life again. Grateful that I had only eaten a lick of the Nutella, I began laughing again. Of course, I could be mad at the catering company for the event, who failed to label the contents of the milky brown bowl, and I was, but above all, a strange but comforting sense of pride swelled within me. I had just eaten something that could have killed me, but there I was, standing tall.
All my life, I have been cautious of my allergies. I have become used to giving a two-minute monologue of all my food sensitivities to restaurant waiters, never ashamed, because I want to live at the end of the day. So when I see Tik Toks on my For You Page that deem those with nut allergies as the weakest links, I chuckle because maybe we aren't the fittest to survive, but those with allergies know how to balance fear with fun better than anyone else.
It is a strange dichotomy to have a body that loves you so much that it will attack any invader, from cashews to a lobster roll, to keep you safe. Yet in keeping you safe, your body inflicts moments of pain unto you:swollen tongues, scratchy throats, teary eyes, and a chorus of sniffles.
As a seventeen-year-old, I have had to relearn my body and its needs after every allergic reaction. I am a sensitive soul because my body is vulnerable, which can be beautiful if you let it be. I re-read the labels on food packages repeatedly because one must take a particular type of care to protect themselves and nurture the body that flinches at every touch and swells at every new food.
My friends sometimes joke, "what if you want to kiss someone who has just eaten a glob of peanut butter, straight from the jar. Are you going to tell them to rinse out their mouths?"
Well, yeah. Peanut butter is the kiss of death, and no prince is worth the fall.
And it's funny. For all my life, I wondered what Nutella, the hazelnut spread everyone drools over, tasted like. I remember being a nine-year-old, sitting at a pizza parlor for my best friend's birthday, sulking because the birthday treat was a sweet pizza with Nutella, powdered sugar, and strawberries. Or just a couple of months ago, as I longed to be like the children on television swiping Nutella on their whole-wheat toast. Then I ate it accidentally, and it didn't taste that good!
Even if I'm still the only kid at the peanut-free lunchroom table, it is a seat I have grown to love, a seat that was made just for me, and I guess the other 3 million Americans in the country who are allergic to nuts, but really, just for me.