She Gave Me Oreos

by Juli

My grandmother lived in a red and white house that looked for all the world like a barn. Actually, she only lived in the top half, at least for a while. My aunt and cousin lived on the first floor. At some point I think she moved downstairs as well, but it all gets sort of muddy for me, the moves up and down, so we’ll stick to upstairs. The apartment she rented was only two or so blocks down the street from ours, so my Grandma used to watch us while my mother worked at the bakery. Probably when my mother worked other places too, but I mostly remember the bakery. Our street was Bensch Street, and yes, that’s with an “s.” It’s a wonder any of us can spell, when your very own street misinforms you daily that there’s an “s” in bench.

When I look back, the walk from our house to Grandma’s included a pretty good hill just past our block. I always got tired at the top, although I can’t remember seeing that hill last time I went back. Is that what happens when you get older? Does your experience flatten your perception of everything, or does it make looking back more topsy turvy?

Hill or no, there were always a couple of pop cans to be gathered from here to there, and even back then, that was ten cents return for each can in Michigan. That’s how my brother and I got candy money, so we were always prowling for them, heads swaying back and forth on the look out for discards. I think people littered more back then, because I never see soda cans on the street anymore. But to this day I notice my brother walks with his head a little down, scanning the sidewalk. Me, I barely look where I’m going now. But back then, the stakes were higher, and I was closer to the ground, so we both looked sharp.

Through a small entryway, the steps to my Grandmother’s apartment drew up and twisted sharply and steeply to the left. Narrow, as I remember, even as a small child. They were covered with something that looks in my memory as though it must have been an early variation of green astroturf. But that could be the sweet Technicolor whisperings of the way-back-when machine. The carpet may have easily been a sculpted brown or tufted mustard yellow. It was the seventies after all. But I remember them bright green, worn in the center of each step, grossly florescent around the edges, so those are the stairs I’m climbing now.

I used to wonder how Grandma made it up and down that narrow little staircase, although I saw her do it plenty. I could barely get up them, granted I was only three or four when these memories were made and those stairs were scaled. My Grandma was a mighty large woman, I couldn’t even guess what she might have weighed. Three hundred? Four hundred? Now I look back and know she was obese, and realize that’s probably the main reason she died so young (in her mid fifties), but then I didn’t even think of her as fat. She was Grandma. She was wonderful. She was perfect. She had a big loud laugh, a mischievous smile, and the most distinctive warm smell I’ve ever smelled in my life. Even to this day I’ll catch a wave of something that smells faintly like Grandma, and it just about brings me to my knees with longing and grief.

Hope Ruth Cross had salty hair with a little pepper, slightly wavy and above her shoulders. Hope wore big house dresses and no shoes and no socks. She liked onion and mustard sandwiches on Wonder Bread, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and Kool cigarettes. I remember sitting on her lap, watching her flick ashes in a big square ashtray the color of burnt umber. She’d let me take a sip or two of her beer and taught my brother, my cousin, and me naughty songs that made us laugh so hard tears would fall down our cheeks.

Popeye the sailor man

Toot! Toot!

Lived in a garbage can

Toot! Toot!

He liked to go swimmin’

with bare naked women,

He’s Popeye the sailor man!

Toot! Toot!

My cousin and I must have been only about four then, and my brother six. The same ages my kids are now. Maybe that’s why I’ve been missing her so much lately. The genetic imprinting of my children echoing back that harmony in time when a great woman loved three children who needed loving very much. I swear I hear her laughing in my children’s laughs.

There she is, surrounded by plumes of cigarette smoke and smelling faintly sour-sweet like beer. She’s propped up against an old steel and formica table that rocks a bit and is sprinked by cinnamon-colored rust. She’s smiling at us now and waving us over as she bends and pokes around for something we can put our pop cans in. A couple of bright orange trash bags are in the corner, spotted by neighborhood flies, buzzing and spinning, whirling and twirling, my earliest universe. She gives us big hugs, wet kisses, and there they are, on the table I can see them now, three glasses of milk and a box of Oreo cookies.

Thank you Grandma. You never had enough money to take care of yourself, but you always treated us. I just wanted to let you know I still remember.

And I love you.

Tan Lines, Monster Trucks, and Ta-ta Triage

by Juli

So, flesh. I have never seen such vast expanses of dark, white people in all my life. Vitamin D deficient? It’s listed as a chronic issue on the cover of my Runner’s World this month, but it’s certainly not a problem here. Those poor saps hocking spf 70 down in the village are not getting rich off the regulars in Carova. By the looks of things, anyway. And, I’ll be honest, I’ve spent a lot of time shamelessly spying from behind my cheap Target sunglasses and pink freckled nose this vacation.

Based on one week’s highly unscientific observation, our coinhabitants seven miles up from where the paved road ends in Corolla, seem to thrive in full blazing, bloody hot sun. All day, 10am to 6pm. Photosynthetic hybrids, I suspect. From them, I have learned that all necessary bodily functions and activities can be accomplished during high burn-index hours, in public, and while holding a Corona. That, and when you leave the beach in a caravan at the end of the day, you should honk your horns repeatedly, blare your radio, and hoot wildly all the way back home. People will think you’re so cool.

Pickups unload little villages in the morning. Sun tents, coolers, chairs, beach games, little tables, American flags, your favorite Jolly Roger flag (ahoy there matey!), and, I shit you not, the people to the left of us for the last three days put up a collapsible port-a-potty. I guess Captain Morgan must give you the trots, because making it 500 yards back to the house to use the crapper is just too damn far.

Close your eyes and you could be here too. There’s you, your significant other, Little Jimmy, Little Sarah, your dog Spot, and your other dog Spot all out for a day in the sun. Your neighbors are pirates on one side and a nervous looking family from Long Island with a beagle named Baxter on the other. Add occasional wild herds of horses (for which it is illegal to be within a hundred feet of) forcing unplanned familial migration and unceremonious abandonment of castles mid-construction. If you’ve never had a huge wild horse take a proper long pee or a healthy crap near you on the beach, then you might not realize the obvious – you pick up and move. (I am, truth in writing, adlibbing a bit here, since we didn’t get chased by wild horses this year, but I have the pictures to prove that it did, indeed, happen last year, as well as compelling photo-evidence of the epic pisses well-endowed male horses can take.)

I’m meandering here. And I’m sure I’ll get you to my point if my drink lasts that long. So, there you are. You’ve driven down to the beach, because it’s safer to have a car near you to stake out your territory. There is no paved road to get you in any civilized fashion to the many multi-family vacation homes that sprinkle the beach. But there’s the beach, and cars can drive on the hard pack closest to the ocean on the east or closest to the dunes on the west. The strip of beach in the middle is safe. Mostly. At low tide anyway. (My advice is to pick the two surliest looking bunches and get a spot there in the middle of them. Someone tries to run you all over, at least you’ve picked a roving band of leather-skinned hoodlums that can chase down the bugger and kick some ass.)

Anyway, so remember this is the ocean, and the surf is loud. You can’t hear cars. You must teach little Jimmy and Sarah to ask you to cross the “road” to the water. And not to go back behind the car in that tempting soft sand. It’s the highway kids. Spot and Spot? Let’s hope when you say “Wait” they’re not lured instead by the siren song of the drunk Frisbee toss two encampments over. Or that they haven’t filled their bellies with salt water and suddenly get the dookies in the middle of the thoroughfare while a beach cowboy is bearing down on them in an all terrain vehicle embellished with custom flamework.

Speaking of. There are no “cars” out here. Some AWD vehicles make it out, but lots get stuck at some point. You really need a proper 4x4 to be safe, and even then you require some basic beach driving know-how, properly deflated tires, and a high tolerance for a bumpy ride. Not to mention ninja-like reflexes to dodge those damn beachgoers in the middle of right where you need to be. If you do get stuck, tows are 150 bucks, and that’s just to get you unstuck. God help you if you get 200 yards up the beach and eat another ditch. The tow trucks circle like vultures, and I don’t blame them. People are morons. Your Subaru is not going to make it there buddy. Go get a ground clearance clue.

Needless to say, it’s great transportation watching here; we’ve seen all kinds of vehicles traversing the beach that the gods of asphalt probably never envisioned. Huge yellow school buses exalted on high monster truck tires. Golf carts souped up to look like ATVs. Suburbans driven by 10 year-olds. Long parades of Jeeps in rainbow colors bringing the tourists up to gawk at pooping horses. Impossibly huge flatbeds taking fiberglass pools to new construction somewhere north. It’s the Wild West of big nobbies and low pressure. If that sounds dirty, you are now in the right frame of mind to talk about the swimsuits.

Today I decided how I feel about pregnant women in bikinis. I admit, I can be a fan under the right conditions. Here’s the deal. I’ll take a nice round pregnant belly in a bikini any day to some of the specimens that see fit to strut their flesh out here in tiny patches of quick-dry fabric. I mean, good LORD, there are children around. Back boobies and muffin tops should be considered when selecting beach attire. Why hasn’t “What Not to Wear” done an OBX special? Hello, low lying fruit. Which brings to mind the melon issue. Underwires, girls. That’s all I’m saying. Man, there is some ta-ta triage to be done in the world. I’m going to give a quick nod to the men, though. You’ve made progress on the coverage front. Thank you for the generous swim shorts that are now in style. Just remember to give them a yank up in the back every now and then to cover your crack, and I’m happy.

Oh, where was I? Yes. Right here. On the beach in North Carolina. Are you getting the impression it’s not been a good time? Au contraire! I have a satisfying tan any dermatologist would be horrified of. I’ve regularly had a beer before noon, laughed myself silly with my husband, spent gratifying time debating “stay or go” over piles of seashells with my kids, and have no doubt we’re never getting all the sand out of that truck of ours. I haven’t taken my running clothes out even once, and I don’t feel guilty about it. For the most part.

Which brings me to my point. I used to think that vacations were supposed to be “perfect.” You gather up your jealousy-inducing pictures and “oh what a great time we had stories” and take them back to spread around like confetti back on home turf. I guess I’m learning that’s not the way it works for us. I am not about trying to construct the perfect Travel & Leisure vacation anymore. Our 2010 summer vacation has been equal parts hysterically funny and just plain hysterical. Our version of visiting Wally World. And did we love it anyway? Hell yes.

Wild, Wild Horses

by Juli

I have a birthday galloping into view, and while it’s not a decade roll, it will serve quite efficiently as my transit to the mid-life crisis ranch.

38. Whoa, Nellie.

Ten, twenty, thirty. Thirty-eight. 40 minus 2. Thirty-five plus three.

So cliché. I don’t feel thir-tee-ate. I don’t even feel 24. Well, maybe 24. A mature 24.

This is my problem. (One of them, let’s not pretend, my friends.) Birthdays were never a big deal growing up. Money was scarce, and, if we’re keeping it real here, a lack or desire to properly plan a goal even more scarce, so they seemed to surprise our parents every year. It was almost an awkward occasion, with the last minute scurrying for the cake mix et al. Anyway, not to obsess, but there it was. At the time, before I realized I wouldn’t be forever scarred not to get a sweet sixteen, I’m sure I was upset at the speedbump that was July 11. Now, to be honest, I’m just annoyed that those years were so lightly punctuated as to have a rather irritating side effect. My life has been one big run on sentence devoid of age punctuation.

Gather round. . .Ritual serves a powerful purpose, and those balloons and candle blowing exercises and mad unwrapping binges are the spoonfuls of sugar that help the aging medicine go down. By skipping the soothing ceremony along with its diabolical underbelly of advancing years (notched in little trick blow out candles on various flavors of icing every summer) I’m thinking the decades haven’t made the proper dent in my self-awareness. My mental age is probably in reverse cat years or something. (Appropriately matched to my maturity level. There, I made the joke for you.) Those birthdays rolled by too lightly to leave an impression, and now I'm having to scramble. Like trying to fake-age a fine wine in a microwave or something. You just know it’s going to be ugly. Now, just a few days clinging to the vapors of 37, and I am, in all seriousness, kind of losing my shit. 38 is officially closer to 40 than 35. And well, 40 is 40. It’s boob sag old. I don’t want to be boob sag old. That depresses the hell out of me.

But there it is. The cumulative Happy Birthday to Yous of years past, all done up like some scary Great Auntie with lipstick on her cheek and smelling faintly of Depends. It’s waving to me with a bloated yellow talon with too many baubles. Slipping the Mardi Gras beads of old age on my neck, one at a time, bestowing me with all the indignities of “Well, you’re not in your twenties anymore.” This one is a lovely shade of Florida peach and stands for “You’re wrinkles around the eye old.” This is a blueish purple to represent “worried about veiny hands old.” You are now “ma’am” old. Teenage boys don’t look at you twice old. Save that tinfoil old. Wishing those young tarts would cover up a little more old. God have mercy on your soul, here is the nearly unbearable weight of finding bargains at The Christmas Tree Shop old.

So, I’m sitting here, well, old. And, I’m having a hard time with the number. I admit. But here’s the flip side, so you realize I’m not wallowing too deep in self-pity. (Although, I do have a pretty stiff drink at my side.) I’m on a deck overlooking the ocean. Right now. Listening to the surf and soaking in the positive ions as the day’s heat fades and the breeze is kicking up and serving the smells and sounds of happy stranded people seven miles up a beach with no road. My kids are dangling in a hammock flipping through paperbacks and sucking on tootsie pops. Six wild horses are grazing in the short stubby grasses below. They are gorgeous to tears. I am getting misty eyed. And I am happy beyond the wildest dreams or wishes I could have summoned in those fleeting seconds each year when you’re allowed to dream and wish in front of others.

I have not had everything along the way, but I have everything I could hope for now. That is my birthday realization this year. And a gift I would wait another 38 years to get if I had to.

It’s a big wave to come crashing down at all once. But I wouldn’t give them back, any of them, for anything. Here I (almost) am 38.

So, take it any way you’d like, the bad karma of birthdays past, you can kiss my fat old ass. Happy birthday to me.

New York Times Upsets Parents with Fabricated Story

by Catherine
On June 16, 2010, the NYT published an article called, “The End of the Best Friend,” by Hilary Stout in its Style section. The article stated that there is a movement among education professionals to disrupt close friendships among children and encourage them to have large groups of friends instead. From the article: “But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend?”

However, Stout fails to support this assertion with quotes and references. Her lead expert is a counselor at a school in St. Louis, Christine Laycob, who disavows the point-of-view attributed to her, and is very unhappy with the way she was quoted and interpreted. Here is her response in full, because after the way she was mistreated, I think she deserves to provide her own context:

I was quoted in an article on the cover of the Style Section of the New York Times on Thursday, June 17, 2010 entitled “A Best Friend? You Must be Kidding” by Hillary Stout. Ms. Stout used two unrelated quotes from my 30-minute discussion with her in February 2010 to come across as if I advocated against the concept of best friends in middle school and high school. The topic of best friends was not the focus of the interview; it was addressed as part of a general discussion about the different different issues facing middle school aged children.

During my interview, I told Ms. Stout there is nothing wrong with middle and high school students having best friends. To the contrary, strong bonds between best friends can last a lifetime. I do not discourage or intrude upon best friend relationships – I recommend to parents that they work with their children on how to avoid “toxic” or “overly possessive” best friendships, where, for example, a friend might say “You’re my best friend so you cannot be friends with anyone else but me!”

Parents often contact me when they are concerned their children lack a best friend. I reassure them that it is perfectly normal for students to have groups of friends and that the absence of a best friend is not a cause for concern. I do not think my role is to find best friends for students, nor is my role to break up such bonds amongst students. As a school counselor, I encourage students to engage in all such friendships that have a positive impact on their middle school years.

This describes my brief discussion with Ms. Stout relating to “best friends”. Please understand only a small portion of my comments were actually used in the article, and they were used by Ms. Stout specifically to create the slant and argument Ms. Stout desired.

Their second anti-best friend expert, Jay Jacobs, Director of Timber Lake Camp, in New York, also expressed some disappointment in email over the way he was quoted in the article:

The quote was technically accurate but in the context of a camper focusing, OVERLY, on one best friend to the exclusion of everyone else. That did not come across. We don't oppose campers having a best friend - it should just be in moderation. The story DID make it look like we were against campers
having best friends. Obviously, that's not the case.

I did not hear from anyone after my first interview and I was a bit surprised at the way my remarks were portrayed.

A parent quoted in the article expressed surprise and confusion at the turn the article took. In her blog, Robin Shreeves writes:

I was blown away at the turn the article takes. I’d be curious to know if Hilary Stout, the writer, ended up writing a very different piece than she intended to.

The blogger NYTpicker has reported on this story, but was unable to get a comment from any New York Times representatives. When I queried the New York Times on this subject, I was referred to a blog post at The Village Voice, which they felt was sufficient response. In it, Stout says, “That quote is 100% accurate. It was not two unrelated quotes. There was perhaps a sentence between the two quotes. All I can say is that I'm very confident of my notes from the situation. It was all in one response, and it was the answer to the first question in the interview.” I followed up by requesting Stout's notes and/or transcript of the interview, but I have not yet received a response to that follow up query.

The Village Voice concludes with:

I've pasted the email from Stout below, but let's make one thing clear: None of these people called Stout with complaints before NYTPicker reached out to them. They could have. And if you're only one of two sources in a story being quoted on a controversial position you weren't entirely ready to back, sometimes, sources backpedal. It happens. Especially when given a little heat. And The NYTPicker has made it their job -- for better and for worse, and more often than not, better -- to suss out the truth behind every NYT story they find fault with. In this case, it looks like they're wrong, and there's even less of a story behind the story than there is behind any trend piece -- most of which are inherently "made up" anyway -- to begin with.

So apparently if a source is misquoted and they do not call the newspaper on their own initiative within days of the story being published, then they have no right to complain? And also, everyone knows that these trend stories are “made up,” so there's no scandal here that Stout's story is pretty much made up, as well, and that she managed to damage a real human being's reputation in the process?

Gotcha journalism is highly questionable even in the realm of politics and investigative journalism. There is little reason to publish an opinion that a source will not publicly agree with, unless you believe they have a hidden agenda. To pull this kind of crap in a Style section story, that is “inherently 'made up' anyway – to begin with” is absolutely ridiculous. It's obvious that Christine Laycob and Jay Jacobs are not secretly breaking up close friendships among children and do not hold any such beliefs. In addition, according to the NYTpicker, they were not offered the courtesy of quote review, which was given to other sources in the story.

Patti Kinney, who was quoted near the end of the article, spoke with Stout in her capacity as a representative of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Although she did not object to her quote and did not feel her views were misrepresented, she did tell me in a phone conversation that she is not aware of any national trend among education professionals for discouraging best friendships—this from someone who makes it her business to be aware of significant national trends in her field. ”My focus of my conversation with her was that ...I was not aware of any national trends of best friends being not a thing to do, but the quality schools that I saw operating dealt with offering students opportunities to build friendships in a lot of different ways, to ensure that healthy relationships were being built.”

Stout makes strong statements in her article, such as, “But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend?” and “For many child-rearing experts, the ideal situation might well be that of Matthew and Margaret Guest, 12-year-old twins in suburban Atlanta, who almost always socialize in a pack.” However, she fails to back these statements up with even one good quote or reference from an expert. The story is fabricated, and the New York Times should publish a retraction and apologize to those who contributed to it, and to its readers.

Why does this matter to me? I have zero connection or investment in this story. But, it's really quite simple. I don't like lies. Newspapers are supposed to report the truth. I don't care if it's the style section, the financial news, science, or politics, if the story is a lie, then the rest doesn't matter.

Going Jane

By Juli

I think one of the main reasons I’m not batshit crazy, despite the sometimes Maury Povich inspired screenplay that periodically takes over my life and the lives of those around me, is an autopilot feature of my psyche that allows me to switch into Jane Goodall mode. Yes, if you snuck into the cockpit of my subconscious, you’d see the lever there, left of center, with the label “Going Jane.” It’s sort of like going native, but on the flip side. It’s the ability to watch the world go raw and uncensored, and just take it in and trust it’s part of the greater reality-weaving process. I take a deep breath, observe and take notes, and try not to get my panties all in a bunch. The little threads working themselves over under, under over are maddeningly monotonous real time, but they’ll make sense in a few weeks or months or years when I can step back and see the picture in its entirety.

Right?

In religious terms, this state might be spun as detachment, a kind of higher state of being where you transcend your need for worldly connections and achieve an enlightened perspective. I’m not that full of shit to say that’s me and where I go. In psychological terms, emotional detachment can be good or bad, depending. It’s either an inability to connect (bad) or an intentional assertiveness to ignore the trolls (very good). Since I'm calling the shots here on the stage, and I like to avoid embracing too many unflattering labels at any one time (and right now, I'm full up, thanks), I’m going with the “this is a healthy thing I do” behind curtain number two.

So now I emerge from the reverse-chrysalis, not feeling changed much myself, but very much in that eye-goober stupor after a Rumplestilzken-like sleep. The world around me has undergone a great change. Maybe I’ve been working toward the evolution while hunkered in the hole. Maybe I’ve just been with my back to it all. Each time this happens, I come out blinking, realizing I’m light years away from the gravitational pull of that first hole my inner child gets sucked into from time to time. It’s strange and beautiful, the leap, but boy is it often a mess. Smoldering campfires litter the landscape. The retreating calls of familiar mammals echo in the distance. Beer cans, crumpled to-do lists, unpacked boxes, streamers, someone’s boxers hanging from a flagpole, you name it. A big metamorphosis party, and no one bothered to pick up a damn thing.

So here I am again. Thankful to be here having avoided most of the minutia along the way. But a little overwhelmed at getting it all tidied up before the next big trip. Because you know what see when we get that rare look at what’s really going on? Not “the answer” on the broadloom. It’s always a directional sign of some sort. Get going on this-a-way little lady. Life is not a fact-finding mission, for sure. It’s a journey, they say. Boy the hell is it. Happy travels my friends. Pick up some trash on the way out.

Bed Sheets in Limbo

By Juli

There's a load of laundry in our dryer that has been there for two days. I haven’t even checked to see if the towels and washcloths got wound up in the king sized sheets, so it’s quite possible it’s Code Rewash waiting to be discovered. Two days of wet cannon balls in the bed sheets can really smell just awful.

It’s a small thing, I admit. One task left partially undone. Wah, wah, cue the angels. There are others tasks forgotten and neglected though, scattered all over the house. Breadcrumbs of chaos leading to a familiar place where it all comes together and falls apart at the same time. It has me frozen. Where on Earth do I start?

A little background first. I’m cut out for a factory job. I can handle exactly one thing at one time, and it consumes me. Tightening widgets would have been just my thing had I not been catalyzed into unnatural productivity, spurred by memories of poverty and the realities of overwhelming college debt. But a duck still wants to quack like a duck, and I’m borderline freaking out now, because my carefully constructed habitat is in flux with the new juggling of back to work and home and not running and eating too much shit and trying to answer mail and pay bills and remember to put the milk away before I run out the door in the morning. Sweet Jehovah, I can’t remember the last time I flossed, and it’s really starting to burn a hole into my stomach lining just thinking about it.

Linens and coping deficiencies aside for a moment. Lately I’ve been reading and wondering a lot about intuition. Feeling the future, developing our different ways of knowing rather than stuffing it down with food or drink or pharmaceuticals. So if I use this little freakout swirly-swirl that I’m in right now as on object lesson, what if this heart thumping, ceiling staring, restless period that crashes over me isn’t a handicap? What if it’s my own little The Color Purple version of “God is Trying to Tell You Something”? It’s always scared the shit out of me, made me run and hide and drop what I’m doing. Go underground. Fly south for the winter, whatever. But what if it’s really a gift, and what I’m supposed to be doing is poking my head OUT instead of in? Maybe it’s a shift in the breeze, opportunity beckoning, the gates are about to open, don’t leave now or you’ll miss the best part. Maybe the fates have my number, and I still haven’t learned to answer the phone.

Or, maybe I could just be all sorts of effed up.

So what does all of this have to do with dirty laundry? Here’s the deal. Laundry is my THING. It wasn’t my mother’s thing. It was her un-thing. Which is exactly why it’s MY thing. She would let it pile up in great mountain ranges in our sometimes wet basement. And when she did do it, she would fashion intricate sculptures of wet and dry tangled masses -- on the tops of the washer, dryer, couches, chairs. I learned from a young age that pulling up the stepstool and doing my own laundry, start to finish, meant I would have clean skivvies the next day. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t. I can’t stand searching for socks in piles, trying to find a mate while you’re late for school, or work, or the dentist, or whatever. And yes, I’m always late anyway. But my underwear is clean and my socks match thank you very much.

The gist is that I don’t let laundry pile up when the life machine is working even half-ass properly. So when the laundry IS piling up, there’s mischief afoot. It’s a harbinger of doom. Karmic disarray, the Juli equivalent of standing in the middle of the forest and watching the animals all run in frantic life-saving desperation in the opposite direction I’m moving.

A moment to reflect.

I know what this all means. I see the bright white light of my self-exploration. I need to get off my tired ass and head down right now. Face the waiting state of whatever it is I’ve been ignoring. Untangle the twists and knots of my no-iron percale. Maybe I’ll find it’s not so bad after all. Maybe the laundry isn’t a huge wet starting-to-mold mess, and it’s just patiently waiting to be dried and folded, still smelling faintly of lavender and vanilla. Wouldn’t that be nice? Then we’d both be redeemed.

The Masque of the Peanuty Death

By Catherine

If you have a child in school, you are probably very familiar with the rules about peanuts and other nut products that schools now have, to prevent anaphylactic reactions in allergic children. For the most part, I've been patient with these rules. My son has grown up believing it's practically a crime to eat a peanut butter sandwich in public. He begged us not to send him one to camp, even though the camp was not "peanut free," feeling that even though it had not been explicitly mentioned that nuts weren't allowed, that there was still something improper about eating them around others. His dirty little private habit. Nut eating.

I guess I finally snapped when I received an invitation to an outdoor picnic at my son's school, wherein each family would be bringing their own meal, eating outdoors, on their own blankets, with their own dishes and utensils, and not sharing any food, and yet we were admonished not to bring any foods containing peanuts or tree nuts. The justification for this was that some of the children have “airborne” nut allergies and any contact could be life threatening.

As a biochemist, I know that nut allergens (and most food allergens) are protein molecules and as such are not naturally volatile. They are big, heavy, lumpy things that do not naturally evaporate, sublimate, or otherwise take wing and fly into people's orifices, unlike pollen, fragrances, and chemicals to which people sometimes have very real allergies to airborne exposure. In order to be inhaled, they have to be pretty vigorously chopped up and thrown about in great quantities, such as in a peanut processing plant. I decided to get to the bottom of what science and medicine knows about airborne exposure to food allergens, especially the dreaded peanut. I expected to learn that reactions to airborne nut allergens were rare, or that there was a minimum quantity or range below which reactions were unlikely.

What I learned instead was wholly unexpected. I could not find, either in the scientific literature nor in the media, a single substantiated case of fatal anaphylaxis from airborne peanut exposure. I did find out that the girl who died after a peanuty kiss from her boyfriend actually died from an asthma attack that was unrelated to her boyfriend's consumption of peanut butter nine hours before. Certainly a tragic loss for her family and friends, but not a useful data point in the peanut allergy story.

It was also difficult to find any documented cases of non-fatal anaphylaxis from airborne exposure to peanuts or tree nuts, or documented moderate-to-severe allergic reactions from airborne exposure peanuts or tree nuts. Allergy expert Michael C. Young describes a small scale study that was unable to reproduce inhaled peanut reactions when subjects were blinded and exposed to peanuts in the room, suggesting that many perceived airborne reactions are actually conditioned physiologic responses. This small study does not prove that airborne anaphylaxis doesn't exist, but certainly suggests that it is very uncommon. However, when you consider that peanut protein allergen is undetectable in room air in real life conditions (Perry, TT, MK Conover-Walker, A Pomes, MD Chapman, and RA Wood. "Distribution of Peanut Allergy in the Environment." J Allergy Clin Immunol 113.5 (2004): 973-6.), it really does seem that excessive measures such as completely peanut free schools or peanut-policing of non-allergic kids' lunches are unwarranted.

What is wrong with an excess of caution? Well, first of all, it is normally the case when addressing a public health threat to evaluate the effect of policies on the rate of mortality/morbidity in the population from the threat being addressed. However, in the case of anaphylaxis by airborne peanut exposure, the baseline rate of morbidity/mortality is ZERO. There is no way to evaluate the success of school peanut policies based on outcomes among children, because they were not in real danger to begin with (from airborne exposure, that is). Instead, the peanut policy is driven by parental anxiety and well-intentioned efforts by parents to educate others about their child's allergies (unfortunately, there are still people who believe that all food allergies are just attention-seeking drama), and responses by liability-averse administrators. In this environment, there is no natural limit to the precautions that could be imposed on all children, in the interests of protecting some from a perceived risk. One can imagine draconian restrictions on a long list of foods, based on individual allergies, and extrapolating the mythology of the airborne peanut to any and all allergens.

In fact, when I first thought of this possibility, I imagined it happening in some sort of near-future dystopia—a “what if this goes on” scenario. A very little bit of web surfing, however, showed me that these logical extremes have already been reached in many areas. Real life school policies range from asking kids to wash up after having target foods for breakfast, before coming to school, to requiring children to bring lunches comprised entirely of prepackaged foods, with ingredients labels on them. Here is a message board where teachers are discussing such things completely without irony, and you can clearly see how fears of airborne and casual contact peanut anaphylaxis have been extended in two directions. On one hand, new food allergens are being added, while on the other, ever more diffuse and theoretical exposures are feared. The only way out of this mess is rationality. The price is our children's security and sense of wellbeing, not to mention the perfectly reasonable right to bring to school a lunch of your choosing.

School allergy policies should be based on sound science, not fear, and that is the recommendation of this review offering guidance to allergists in advising schools on food allergy policies. I could not find any recommendations from any source, even the notoriously proactive Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) recommending large scale bans on food allergens in schools and other public places (although FAAN does include guidelines addressed to parents of college students about how to manage their adult child's allergy while away at school, rather than advice to young adults about how to manage their food allergies in a college dorm.). The primary goal should be preventing accidental ingestion, and age-appropriateness of the measures taken into consideration. It does not make sense to try to protect a fourteen-year-old child from accidentally ingesting peanut by putting random foreign objects into his mouth, failing to wash his hands before a meal, or licking doorknobs. It is also not fair to expect a child to deal with daily contact rashes and irritation because of sloppy handling of peanut butter, even if it is not life threatening. Peanut-free classrooms make sense. The kids have to spend most of their day in there. Totally peanut-free schools, where peanuts are contraband and there is no “safe” place to eat them are excessive. Forcing children to eat processed foods that come in plastic packages to protect the health of others is pure, distilled crazy.

For children that suffer from a severe food allergy, the greatest gift and protection is the knowledge of how to manage their allergy on their own, with help from adults, and the confidence to do so with caution, but not fear.