 |
Today, as I ate my peanut
butter sandwich, blissfully free of hives or death by anaphylactic shock, I
pondered the conundrum of the peanut and the recent peanut-allergy-related hype.
I realize that my use of
the word ‘hype’, a term often used in conjunction with such things as skinny
jeans and Gangnam Style dance moves, to describe a serious health concern might
offend some people, but I stand by it.
Maybe the nut allergies themselves are not a trend—I’m sure children for
decades have been suffering from this hardship—but the amount of attention
placed on those afflicted is
recent. Take this example from my
teaching career.
In the year 2001, I taught
a seventh grader named Andrew. Andrew
was a “normal” kid. I had no
official paperwork on him; he was in no special programs at school; I had not
spoken with his parents via phone or meeting. One day after lunch, Andrew came up to me and mumbled, “Ith
hink gotta olden a hut.”
I said, “What?”
He said, “I think ig
oughta old of an hut.”
I said, “One more
time?”
He said, “I think I got a
hold of a nut.”
Even when the sounds
formed into actual words, I still had trouble comprehending. Then a lightbulb went on. “Oh!” I said. “You mean a peanut?” He nodded. “Are you
allergic to peanuts?” Another
nod. “Do you need to go to the
clinic?” More nodding. I sent him. The school nurse pumped him full of Benedryl and sent him
back to class, where he promptly fell asleep. And that was that.
No one had told me this kid had a peanut allergy and no one referred to
what happened that day as an “incident”.
But these days, things are different.
Last year, in the fall of
2011, I taught five students who had 504 plans (a legal document created for
students with a physical or mental impairment that lists classroom needs and
accommodations) officially recording their nut allergies. Paperwork was signed, meetings were
held, words of caution were imparted. Two of these students, I was told, could not even come into contact with a peanut. One girl’s form
contained a half-page list of possible symptoms to watch out for and it
included, between redness in the cheeks and shortness of breath… (I am not
joking here, this is word for word)… a “sense of impending doom”. Yes. I signed a legal document during my last year of teaching,
promising to—while teaching Language Arts to twenty-six seventh graders in my
sixth period class—be on alert for a look of “impending doom” to cross one
thirteen-year-old girl’s face, which is a problem since most thirteen-year-old
girls wear that expression perpetually anyway.
For those of you not in
education, I want to explain this just a tad further. For those words to appear on that document, a parent had to
say them in a meeting with school officials. School officials had to take them seriously enough to type
them into the computer. A minimum
of three adults had to concur in writing that those words belonged on that
form. Now that form follows that
girl through every year of school (unless it is later edited or dismissed) and
is given to every single one of her teachers, who then become legally
responsible for following it. As a
teacher of this student, I was advised not to eat peanuts or peanut products in
my classroom before she arrived, despite the fact that peanut butter sandwiches
were served every day in the school cafeteria and she never once perished while
purchasing her Gatorade in the lunch line.
There were never any
incidents with any of those five students. As far as I know, none of them ever “got a hold of a nut” at
school. However, another student
did miss the big state standardized test that year because he had a “food
allergy challenge” scheduled for the same day. The email from his mom regarding this unavoidable conflict included
the following: “[Name] has been
allergic to nuts all his life, but recent tests indicate that he may no longer
be allergic to some of the tree nuts… We are hoping he can tolerate the pecans
in the food challenge, because that will open some doors for him (pecan pies,
pralines, etc.).” This was a very
sweet and supportive mom, and it was nice of her to let me know of the absence,
but I still find it odd how much random information parents are willing to
share with their children's teachers.
Although I find a lot of
this ridiculous, with kids I can somewhat understand the paranoia. I imagine it’s pretty traumatic to
watch your small child experience a severe allergic reaction, and I don’t blame
parents for wanting to prevent something like that from ever happening
again. (My dog will never be given
another rawhide treat after the time I saw him choke on one and had to reach
into his throat to pull out the white sticky mass that was lodged there, so I get it.) In truth, a lot of this documentation is put into place in
elementary school when the kids are young and less aware of their health concerns and
more likely to eat something they shouldn’t if an adult is not paying
attention. But then the forms go
unedited and the next thing you know the kids are in middle school and completely
capable of taking care of themselves but still have teachers awkwardly
reminding them not to ingest something they haven’t eaten in ten years.
What I don’t understand is when this paranoia
carries over to adults. Every
year, my school district held a two-day professional development conference at
one of the high schools. Every
teacher was required to attend (though not all did) and presenters from all
over the country flocked in to impart their expertise on everything from
assessment to vocabulary games.
Beginning in 2004, a bold red text started appearing at the bottom of
the email of conference information explaining that a couple of the
presenters had severe air-borne peanut allergies and for that reason, they
asked everyone not to bring any peanut products into the building during the
conference. ????? At the sight of that warning, several
questions jumped immediately to my mind, the first and foremost of which being How the heck did you people survive this
long? Again those afflicted
with this allergy will probably find my words here callous, but I have to believe
that this is being blown out of proportion because if an email has to be sent
to 2,000 people alerting them of your condition before you can set foot into a public
school building, then how are you not a hermit? How do you go to restaurants and sporting events and parties
and (horror of all horrors) the grocery
store where aisles and aisles of packaged evil lay in wait to suffocate
you? And how did you get to this
conference? Because the last time
I was on an airplane, the nice flight attendant gave every single passenger in
that tiny, air-tight cabin a package of peanuts to open and eat and drop on the
floor and exhale into the canned air for three and a half hours.
That’s my argument for why
all this peanut allergy hype is nuts.
If Southwest Airlines can still pass out these tiny little allergen
grenades on their flights, I’m thinking that pretty much everyone else should
be able to walk into a building or take a math class without first announcing
to the world that their throat could close up if they eat a Reeces.
Images from:
http://www.xplosivegrowth.com/2012/10/28/5-good-things-to-know-about-peanut-butter/
http://www.peanutvan.com.au/archive.php?start_from=49&ucat=&archive=&subaction=&id=&
http://cheezburger.com/2879331328
http://peanutfreekid.com/store/Default.asp
http://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/nwr-work-related-need-happy-thoughts/dd0a90e4c28258e9.html
