Aaaand off we go!

I'm about to leave on another family vacation, so there won't be any new posts for a while. Poodleface says thanks for your patience.

Can I please explain to you that I am not your cousin?

I really, really hated my high school Geography class. We had to take notes in the dark because the teacher insisted on projecting pictures, we had to make power point presentations and then waste two days listening to our classmates stumble through them, we had to memorize the names of small rivers and then regurgitate them on quizzes, and I sat near a girl who clearly knew more about my allergy than I did.
You see, she had a cousin. And her cousin was allergic to peanuts. But her cousin never mentioned it, and she ate at restaurants, and she didn't carry an EpiPen, and she certainly didn't have a service dog, and so, really, what was wrong with me that I had to be such an attention whore about the whole thing?
We had this conversation about once a week. She told me condescendingly that her cousin got along fine without a service dog, I pointed out that some allergies are more severe than others, and then she either called me a bitch or said I was a liar, depending on the tone of that week's conversation. Logical reasoning did not get rid of her. Providing accurate information and citing my sources did not get rid of her. Refusing to speak or make eye contact or acknowledge her presence did not get rid of her. Fighting fire with fire did not get rid of her. And asking to have my desk moved did not work.
I felt like this girl was trying to persuade me that I didn't need to use little paper wrappers to bake cupcakes because she baked cookies last week and didn't need them, and still insisted that I didn't need them even when I explained how a cupcake is different from a cookie and not all desserts are exactly alike. And she was angry about it. Why was I using paper wrappers? What did I think I was doing? That was wrong, wrong, wrong! Did I want to kill trees?

Hazards of a service dog: running errands with a walking disaster

As much time as I spend with Poodleface, sometimes it's just impossible to keep him from ruining himself. And then I have to go out in public with him. 

• One of my first poodle disasters was when there wasn't enough time to finish his haircut and I had to take him to school with some patches of fur longer than others.
• When I had strep two years ago and was too tired to pay attention to him he stole a tube of grape lip balm off my desk and ate it, turning his face and front paws a shade of purple that wouldn't wash out.
• In an art class I took in high school he lay down on a plate of black paint and spent two weeks looking part dalmatian.
• I was writing myself a note on my hand during class while we watched a movie in the dark. A desk tipped over, Poodleface barked in surprise, and I dyed his muzzle blue when I covered his mouth before the ink had dried. 

Funny story: I'm not really an animal abuser

There used to be a rumor at the high school that I was an animal abuser and that whenever I was alone with Poodleface I beat him. Although we communicate really well, I think there are always going to be times we don't understand each other and make some sort of mistake. While we were attending school I tripped over him once and stepped on his paw twice, and there were several times where he stepped on my foot or walked into my legs. Whenever one of those things happened everyone nearby would start shouting that I was an animal abuser. It was really very annoying; I doubt there's anyone in the world who hasn't tripped on their dog at some point.
I had the flu a few months before I left high school and on my first day back I needed to talk to my science teacher about the test I'd missed. He gave us the period to work, so I decided not to wait until after class and told Poodleface to stay beside my desk while I went up to speak with the teacher. It was something I'd done lots of times; rousing a sleeping poodle and having him walk with me just to ask a question or hand in a work sheet isn't practical, and as long as he can see me he's perfectly willing to stay.
I'd barely said two words to the teacher before I heard nails skittering on linoleum and Poodleface came hurrying up the aisle to me. He looked frightened of something, and as I picked up the leash to reassure him a boy who sits near me started stammering that he'd thought Poodleface wanted to be petted.
He'd thought, he told me as I put my dog back under my desk, that the only reason I wouldn't let anyone pet Poodleface was to me mean to him, so as soon as I left him alone he tried to comfort him because he was probably really sad if I was abusing him and he could use all the love he could get. But Poodleface freaked out because he knows I'm the only one who ever touches him in school and he could clearly see that I was nowhere near him, and when he jumped the boy tried to grab him, and it became embarrassingly clear that I wasn't an animal abuser when Poodleface ran to me for reassurance.
Not that it did anything to stop the rumor, but it's a good lesson in why service dogs shouldn't be petted. Even if you really want to.

Did you read the dead bird?

I'm a vegetarian. Not because of any meat-is-murder train of thought, because my mother is a vegetarian and I was raised on a vegetarian diet. When I was about eight my parents asked me if I wanted to try meat, but we had a hard time finding a restaurant that didn't cook their meat in or close to peanut oil, and when I finally got some it wasn't earth-shatteringly wonderful. I ate hot dogs for a while, but after finding an unidentifiable and very chewy thing in the middle of one I was more than ready to go back to salad. There's usually a small packet of ham in the fridge that my father puts in his omlettes, but apart from that the house is pretty meat-free.
My father went to the store last night after we realized that we'd run out of food without anyone noticing. When he came back I started putting the food away and discovered some fried chicken, which raised a lot of alarm bells because the bag said it was from Wal*Mart and we'd discovered when I was eleven that I couldn't eat chicken from Wal*Mart. Since it had been six years I thought that something might have changed, but I was still cautious enough that I went outside in the dark in my pajamas to where my father was continuing to unload the car, where I asked him if he had "read the dead bird," which is wary vegetarian teenager speak for "did you check to make sure it's safe for me to be in the same room with the chicken?"
He said he had read the dead bird, but when I got more specific and asked if he'd read the dead bird display he realized that he hadn't. Six years ago the chicken itself had been fine, while the display had warned that everything on it had been made next to stuff that was made in peanut oil.
Although I'm usually the one who searches with him, Poodleface was already sniffing around the chicken when my dad got back to the kitchen, so he asked him if there was anything there and he happily indicated. Which impressed my dad, since he normally doesn't give Poodleface the time of day. And yet the dog was willing to search for him.
I came in shortly after that and asked Poodleface to confirm what he'd told my dad, which he did very emphatically, slapping his paw against the bag when my dad asked him if he was sure. "It's here, right here, I've only told you three times!"  Then he got his reward and the chicken was removed from the house.
Have I mentioned that I love that dog?

Let's muse on my troubled past

My school system has a very high suicide rate, but it also has a high rate of students who go on to higher education. What's up with that?
My friend thinks that it's because they systematically exclude, bully, and harass everyone who doesn't fit their idea of a perfect student until they either drop out or kill themselves. I wasn't sure whether or not I believed her hypothesis until I went in to take part of my GED and found myself face-to-face with seven people, six of whom I recognized as having mysteriously vanished from school months or years previously. And I didn't just remember them from across the cafeteria, these were people who I'd seen being screamed at in the halls by teachers while I tried to look away and not stare because I'd been there and I knew how horrible it was when people stared. People who no longer wanted to speak in class, like me, and who tried not to look a teacher in the face, like me. I think I was probably the only one who routinely received death threats, but that's probably to be expected when you've got such a prominent Achilles heel.

I think my friend might be right, and I kind of hope she is. Because I've read other blogs and it looks like I'm unique in the sheer volume of shit I had to tolerate over my malfunctioning immune system. And I've read news articles where they arrested kids for doing once what my classmates did on a daily basis. And if that's the reality then I must have either deserved what happened because no one wanted to stop it, or no one wanted to stop it because these aren't nice people and it's in no way my fault.
Although the fact that I had no less than five teachers who blatantly waved peanuts around just to see what I would do makes me lean towards the "it's not my fault" line of reasoning.

Part of me is male with four legs, apparently

Before I got one myself, I thought of a service dog as something like a wheelchair or an artificial arm. After I got one I re-evaluated my analogy and decided that they're more like exceedingly well-behaved children who think squirrels are really interesting. I also found out that, legally, they're the same as pacemakers or insulin pumps. From the perspective of a lawyer, Poodleface is an extension of my own body, which is how they justify that I'm allowed to take him everywhere. Not because he's a very special dog, but because he's me. Only furrier. And the wrong gender.
I found that policy a bit oddly worded until I read The Golden Compass and realized that I've technically got a daemon.

Do I really take that long?

We'd stopped at a gas station in the middle of a long drive home from a day trip out of town, and I was looking forward to getting something cold to drink to combat the summer heat. I took Poodleface over to use the grass before we went inside. The man behind the counter immediately told me to take my dog back outside. "It's a service dog," I told him, pointing to the jacket. He crossed his arms and glared. "We only allow seeing eye dogs."

"Service dogs are allowed everywhere. It's federal law. I have his ID card if you want to see it," I offered in the bland tone I usually adopt when arguing service dog policy. He shook his head sternly at me, but didn't object when Poodleface and I headed for the neon RESTROOMS sign. 

I'd seen an ice cream cooler by the window and was envisioning myself eating a popsicle, but when I looked they didn't have any of the brands I usually buy. I took one out and started reading the ingredients list.

"Look." said the man, sounding very annoyed, "Is there something I can help you find?"

I looked up from the list. "I have severe food allergies," I told him, "I have to read this."

"Oh, do you?"

I chose not to answer that and went back to the list. It checked out okay, so I put it on the counter and reached for my money while I waited for him to ring it up. He didn't, opting to hold it hostage while he interrogated me a little more.

"What kind of service does that dog do?"

"Medical alert."

"Which means what?"

I gave the popsicle a pointed look. He scanned it, accepted my money, but withheld the change. I took a deep breath.

"A medical alert dog accompanies a person with a hidden disability and alerts them if they're going to have an attack or need medical treatment. Seizure dogs are medical alert dogs."

He studied me for a few seconds. "Do you have seizures?"

I don't even tell people who aren't rude insensitive gits why I have Poodleface because so many of them decide I've found a clever loophole and exploited it to get a pet with a VIP pass, so I simply held out my hand for my change, which I got ten seconds later when he realized he couldn't make me say anything else. 

I went back out to the car with my popsicle, thinking about what a jerk he was and how I hate people like him, when I realized that maybe I had been taking a little too long to read the popsicle. How long do normal people take, anyway?

I do that while I'm shopping too, although for things I buy every time I just flip them over and briefly scan the list, not really taking the time to study it in-depth. Do I annoy other shoppers? Does it look strange? I'd never realized anyone might consider it abnormal.

What do you think? Do you ever read things before you buy them?

I'm not eating that

When I was seven I spent most of my summer at a day camp or with a babysitter. The babysitter I liked; she never tried to give me a snack that my parents hadn't already said was safe and she brought my EpiPen along if we were going to walk to a park or something. But the adults at the day camp I had a problem with.
In the summer program we got two snacks a day in addition to the lunch boxes our parents packed us. I'd take the cup of juice that came with it, but I'd always refuse the snack. It wasn't until fourth grade that I was able to consistently and accurately sound out and define everything in an ingredients list, and so I just didn't take one. Until one day, when the snack was apples. I took one, ate it, and came back with the core a few minutes later and asked for seconds. I got it, but the adults sat me down and asked why I was so hungry today when I'd never wanted a snack before. I explained that I had peanut allergies and didn't know how to read an ingredients list, but that apples don't have ingredients lists, so today I got to have a snack. Then I went off to wash the apple juice off my hands, and the adults apparently stayed behind and decided that my refusal to eat snacks was only paranoia and obviously very unhealthy if I'd been hungry enough to eat two apples. (Or maybe I just liked apples. That was always a possibility, but none of them considered it.) So the next day at snack time they took me aside, presented me with a cup of juice and a packet of teddy bear grahams, and told me that I was going to sit at the table until I'd eaten all of them. I drank all the juice, picked up the packet, turned it over a few times, and decided that I had no idea what the list said and so I wasn't going to eat it. Then I sat at the table for almost an hour, rolling the cup around, playing with my hair, crying a little, and whining about how I had to use the bathroom. They eventually let me up to use the bathroom with the understanding that I would come right back when I was done, and then I ran away and hid in various play rooms until five when my mother came to get me. For the rest of the year they harassed me about eating snacks, but I ran away when the subject came up and either staged a hunger strike or threw a tantrum when cornered, and they never succeeded in making me eat anything. They never told my mother they were doing this and it didn't occur to me that I should, so I don't think she even found out until years later when we were talking about the place I used to go.

Great. Now what do I do?

There was a plane crash when I was in junior high. Some kids died. It's a small community; we all knew them. At least one of them. At least in passing.
I knew this boy, but not really by name. I recognized his picture. He went to this summer program with me, a day camp to keep us out of our parent's hair. Every year there were fewer and fewer of us there, depending on when their parents through they were mature enough to stay home alone. I went there when I was ten and everything was fine. There were about fifteen of us. We had free run of the place, and for the most part we didn't abuse the privilege. I carried my EpiPen (I only had one then, and it had a friendly green cap. The dosage changed as I got older and now I've got two of them and they're an ugly yellow) in a soft black camera case tossed carelessly over my shoulder because I didn't know yet that I should care enough to buy a purse, and nobody really noticed. I wandered off when someone had a snack with peanuts. That was it.
I went there when I was eleven and it didn't even take an hour for everyone to hate me. I'd never been allergy bullied before, or beaten up in a ball pit, but there's a first time for everything, I guess.
There was a boy who waved a crust in the air and said that it came from a peanut butter sandwich, and I crossed my arms and said that it wasn't funny, and he tossed it into the trash and gave me a quick apology and left the room. He didn't try to help me, but he didn't do it again, either. He just kind of stayed away while I learned that I shouldn't use a camera case; it doesn't matter if your EpiPen is undamaged if it's been stolen and hung from a pipe. Honestly, girl. What were you thinking? You use a purse.
I withdrew a month early. Last year I'd made friends by taking off my shoes and shimmying up a light pole. It nearly gave the woman watching us a heart attack, but I knew I wouldn't fall. This year I'd made enemies by existing. I wasn't sure what I'd done, I'm still not, but I irritated a lot of people. Last year the adults said I was cute. This year they told me not to be so sensitive.
And then I went back to school, and I got a purse with multicolored stripes and a pocket that I carried a book in, and I was annoyed but not surprised when I was bullied some more, and I learned that the boy with the crust was dead in a plane crash.
What do you do with that kind of information?
He'd tried bullying me, but he'd stopped, and we'd called a truce of sorts. He certainly wasn't my friend. I didn't know if I hated him. Now he was dead. Now what?
I cried. And I think if the death threat girl died I would cry for her too.
What does that make me?

Moon dust and wet wipes

I've been trying to think of a metaphor to describe what was happening at school, and I think I've finally found one.
Space travel.
I saw a NOVA once about how a chunk of foam damaged a spacecraft. It was part of the thing, a kind of insulation if I remember correctly, and during liftoff it tore free and bounced off of something and severely damaged it, and everyone laughed at the poor scientist who finally figured out what had happened. He proved mathematically that he was probably right, but they still didn't believe that it was possible. He had to get them all out in an empty field and shoot a piece of the foam at a section of the outside of a spacecraft at the speed that it would have been traveling during the liftoff, and only when it punched a hole clean through the thing did his colleagues admit that they may have been a bit close-minded. Because, seriously, it was only foam!
I feel like that. Only I'm not willing to go into anaphylactic shock in front on an audience to prove that I'm not crazy.
How many of you have thought about living on the moon? Probably all of us, myself included. It's the kind of thing the media loves to talk about. But do you know what could screw that up?
Moon dust. It gets into everything. There are records of it clogging equipment during moon landings. And if you stir it up, it floats. And floats. And floats. And gets into bits of your space suit you'd really prefer remained dust free. But how many of you knew about that before I told you? How many of you would have considered that something as small as dust could be potentially deadly? How could dust harm anything? We never saw that on Star Trek!
And, seriously, could traces of peanut oil ever really hurt anyone? No one told us that could happen! People with food allergies are twitchy nerds with poor social skills, everyone knows that! You can't take them seriously when they tell you they could die!
There are simple solutions to both problems. Spacecrafts need to be designed with no loose parts, and we need to seal up equipment so moon dust can't get in.
I just need to avoid peanuts! I just need to be allowed to read ingredients lists and run a wet wipe over things before I touch them! It's not that hard!
But no one wants to believe the problem exists. It's too weird. It gets in the way. It spoils our idea of how things should work.
But refusing to believe in something doesn't make it go away. Scientists eventually had to admit that moon dust and insulation could potentially be very dangerous. I'd like to think that, one day, some of my teachers will realize they could have seriously hurt me.
But I'm not holding my breath.

What would it take to make a scaredy-cat play with fire?

In one of my previous posts I talked about how my allergist assumed that I was no longer allergic to peanuts because I hadn't been to the emergency room in the past year. I hadn't planned on talking about him any further, but today I found an appointment reminder postcard from him in my mailbox and now I'm angry enough to elaborate on his story.

As I said before, he was insistent that I, personally, didn't need a service dog, nor did anyone else with a severe allergy. He explained to my family why he thought it was a bad idea and said that we should instead consider prescription medication to suppress my immune system. My father declined the medication and insisted that he give me the test, as they had planned over the phone. He did have me tested but kept insisting that I must not be severely allergic anymore because I hadn't nearly died recently.

The tests showed that I was still severely allergic and perhaps I hadn't nearly died recently because I was a responsible young adult who knew how to manage my allergy. 

My parents sent in the paperwork for the service dog and everything was approved. Now we just had to get permission from the school district for me to bring the dog to school.

The reason my parents thought I needed a dog was that I kept getting sick in class. I would being to cough and would get painful rashes, usually on the palms of my hands or the undersides of my arms, which indicated that I'd sat at a contaminated desk or touched a contaminated hand rail. The reactions that I was having were usually very painful, and with each new reaction there was a risk that my allergy could become much more severe. It was already at the point were it could kill me, and my parents didn't want it to become bad enough that I could die before medical help could arrive. 

About three weeks after I'd seen the allergist I started to have problems in one of my classes. After a few minutes of class my hands would begin to feel hot and itchy and I would being to cough. On one day I wore short sleeves and the reaction covered my entire right arm. After a few minutes of coughing I would either ask to leave or the teacher would order me to step outside until I could get control of myself, and then I would go down to the office and get some Benadryl from the nurse and ask that someone please clean my desk. This happened three days in a row. On the third day my assigned guidance counselor approached me as I was sitting outside the nurse's office waiting for the period to end. She sat down next to me and asked me, with great concern in her voice, why I was skipping this class. I told her that I wasn't skipping, I really was having an allergic reaction. She said, still sounding very concerned, that she knew it wasn't possible for me to have an allergic reaction unless I ate something and that I could tell her what was bothering me. I tried to explain that some allergies are more severe than others, but she left before I could finish.

She went back to her office and made several phone calls, one of which was to my allergist, whose number I assume she got from my file. She told him that, hypothetically, there was a student who was claiming to have an allergic reaction to peanuts when there were no peanuts present in the room, and that she hadn't recently eaten anything that might have been causing it. And she wondered, hypothetically, if this was possible. My allergist told her that, hypothetically, the student was lying. 

Being the kind, caring, and exceedingly nosy person that she is, my counselor decided that she should save my academic future by putting a stop to my lying. 

There were already a lot of people who didn't believe me, so many that I was honestly surprised when the teacher was the one who asked me to leave. Usually I'm told that I have to stay, and then they would watch me closely to see if they could find a flaw in my acting, and I'd either have to get up and leave without their permission or bother them enough that they let me leave so that my parents wouldn't complain to the school. So the fact that my counselor had gotten a medical professional to say that, hypothetically, I was a liar, wasn't great for the case that I should be allowed to have a service dog.

That night my father spent hours at the computer, surfing the internet and printing a stack of papers as thick as a paperback book. They all talked about severe food allergies, and they all supported what I'd said. He took it to the principal, explained what was happening with me, and then made the case for the service dog. The principal agreed.

But it really screwed me up. I already wasn't sure I deserved a service dog. The junior high had let people give me death threats and acted like I was off my nut when I tried to get them to help me. My allergist had insisted a service dog was unnecessary. And half the adults in my life got angry or exasperated or began patting me on the head when I mentioned my allergies. Was I really allergic? Was I lying so well I'd convinced myself? What could I have done wrong to make so many people angry with me? 

My father cut my old allergist out of the loop. The next time we needed a doctor's note he got it from the pediatrician, and he found a new allergist out of state that I'll go to the next time I need an allergy test. So today, when I got the appointment card from that close-minded old fart, and I realized that he still considers me his patient and thinks he can have a say in my life, I took it outside and burned it.