How far am I allowed to go?

While I understand that my school's reluctance and in some cases flat-out refusal to accommodate me for the sake of their convenience was wrong, I have to wonder if they did have a point. Things like regularly wiping down surfaces and reading the label on everything I eat might seem normal to me, but to other people look ridiculously extreme. And do I actually have a right to say that no one around me can eat peanuts ever?
Adults glared at me when I asked them to bring the class candy from one brand and not another, and while that might be somewhat justifiable, where am I supposed to draw the line? I wanted to attend parties, but I didn't want to inconvenience anyone. I didn't know what to do. I still don't.
I panic a little whenever I read about legislation for better allergy policies in schools. "Don't these people know that's inconvenient and annoying? The school officials are going to frown and cross their arms at them! They'll be intimidated! What do they think they're doing???" But that's a stupid response, and I know it's a stupid response, and yet I can't help it because I don't know how far I'm allowed to go.
At what point would you be angry with me?

Sorry, you're not allowed to die for your country

I support our troops, but I'd never thought about joining them. I'd always been small and thin and not very strong, until I had a massive growth spurt a few years ago, and now I'm tall and thin and not very strong. Enlisting just didn't seem like something I could do, or that I wanted to do.
Until I was told that I couldn't. Then I spent several days seriously considering enlisting anyway just to fuck with everybody.
See, my school has this torturous thing called "Post-high planning day" where we were all required to mill around the gym for forty-five minutes while people with brochures gave us free pens and tried to convince us that their college was best.
I already knew where I wanted to go to college. I'd decided three years ago, but I was still required to do things like this. I was also required to take career aptitude and personality match-up tests twice a year every year even though I'd been saying I wanted to be a writer since sixth grade, because God forbid we not have our entire lives planned out by the time we graduate.
Anyway, I really didn't care, so I found some of my friends and trailed along behind them, half-listening to canned speeches on various colleges and collecting a lot of free pens. Until we got to the table advertising military service, where the representative mistakenly assumed I cared and asked me why I had a service dog. When I told him, he said I couldn't enlist. How could they ensure my meals would be safe? How could they get me medical attention if they weren't? How much use was I if I dropped dead in the barracks instead of out on the battlefield where I might at least be able to trip someone?
I don't like being told I can't do things. I don't think anyone does. So even though I understand perfectly the logic behind it, it still really pisses me off. And even though I, personally, never wanted to enlist in the first place, there's probably someone like me out there who did.
What I'm really angry about is that I can't even say it's discrimination because it fucking makes sense. I've got to admit, I'm a very complicated person to accommodate.

I'm just like Jane!

My father and I love to watch The Mentalist. In one episode (spoiler alert!) we get to see Patrick Jane consciously mess with his body's reactions to fake alcohol poisoning. He goes the whole mile, even influencing his heart rate and blood pressure to make it look real.

And I, apparently, can do the same thing. Although my reasons are less honorable; I don't want to catch a killer, I just want to get out of class, and I might also want your sympathy, although opinions vary on just how devious I am. 

You see, someone at my school read an article that said that allergic people can actually make themselves have a reaction by focusing hard enough on what it feels like to have a reaction. 

This was fascinating! It explained that weird nut girl perfectly! We all knew it wasn't possible to be that allergic; she must be doing it to herself!

The article made the rounds, and soon I couldn't cough without half a dozen of my fellow thirteen-year-olds furiously cursing me out for daring to try and pull this crap again.

Opinions varied on why I was actually doing it. Some people thought I didn't realize what I was doing, I was just so helplessly paranoid I wound myself up into fits of panic. I was clearly sick and I needed psychiatric help. Others thought I wanted to be special. I wanted adults to feel sorry for me and treat me differently. I was so desperate to have a disability I was doing everything in my power to fake one. And some people just thought I didn't have the balls to cut class the traditional way.

I showed people that I had a rash, that my skin was patched with angry red. They told me I'd rubbed my skin raw with my nails in an attempt to make it look real. I coughed and coughed, covering my mouth like I wanted to stop, but they told me they knew I was just a good actress. 

And I wasn't sure whether or not they were right. I mean, so many people furious at a thirteen-year-old girl for being sick, shouting at her that what she was claiming wasn't even possible? How could I not begin to believe them?

I asked my parents whether they were right. Was I faking all of this? Did I have something wrong with me mentally? 

My parents had my doctor write the school a note about my allergy. They took it into the office and made sure everyone saw it, and they asked to speak with all my teachers and re-explained what I'd already told them, and left the note with the school nurse to put in my file.

But as soon as my parents left everyone went back to treating me like I was crazy. My teachers told me to stop being dramatic, my classmates shouted at me for being such a bitch. And then they all took it one step further and demanded to know why I was pretending to have an allergy in the first place.

Now it wasn't just the attacks I was faking.

It was the whole allergy.

I really, really hated myself for daring to be allergic to peanuts. Clearly it wasn't right. Clearly it wasn't acceptable. I should just do what everyone was telling me to and stop having the allergy.

But I couldn't do it. 

And there was something else I couldn't do.

I thought, if I was already doing it, already subconsciously faking to get myself out of class, what was wrong with doing it deliberately? If I can't stop, if it's a compulsion that I have no control over, I might as well make it useful and do it to get out of a class I really hate, right? 

So I tried it during math class.

I concentrated really hard on the way it felt to have a reaction. The way my neck and chin prickled. The hot, unpleasant taste in my mouth. The way light was too bright, and the compulsion to cough that I couldn't fight, even when I was barely getting enough air to breathe. 

Nothing happened.

Okay, that was okay, I'd just pretend I was feeling it. It only had to look real. So I scratched at my arms a bit and tried to recreate a rash.

It didn't look right. Rashes are patchy-looking, this just looked like I'd scratched too hard. Why couldn't I do it? If I'd done it so many times before, why couldn't I do it now???

Maybe because I'd actually been telling the truth?

Not that it mattered to everyone else. They all still hated me. Which is probably why they had no problem handing out death threats; I clearly wasn't allergic, so the threat wasn't even real. And why the hell did the school let me get a service dog for a condition I didn't have? That didn't even exist?

I hate this town. 

And the feeling appears to be mutual.

Death threats

When I was in junior high I did something that irritated another girl. I'm not sure what. I just remember that one day she tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned to her she smiled at me and told me that she was going to take a peanut and kill me.
I slapped her. I was so angry I could barely think. Not about what she'd said, but the look on her face when she'd said it. Positively gleeful.
I went to the office and said that I wanted to speak to the principal because someone had given me a death threat. He was very serious about it, very official, until I mentioned that it wasn't a knife or a gun she'd threatened me with, but a peanut. Then he relaxed. He told me that she had only been teasing me, and talked over my protests to say that kids will be kids, everyone is bullied in school. Then he told me that he could suspend me for hitting her, and if anyone was ever being mean to me again I shouldn't fight back, because if I fought back we would both have to be punished.
The next day she found me again and re-told her story, expanding the plot a little to include her going to my house and killing my pets and smearing their bodies with peanut butter so I couldn't bury them, and then killing me slowly in the empty house when I came home and was crying.
This time I didn't hit her. I didn't touch her. I didn't even insult her. I just went back to the principal, who reminded me that this happens to every kid before sending me back out of his office.
And then she would not leave me alone.
And I completely believed her. I believed that if she ever got an opportunity, if we were ever alone together, she would kill me. She looked happiest when she was imaging scenarios of my death.
And she wouldn't stop touching me. She sat behind me in third period, and she loved to brush her hands along the back of my neck and whisper threats in my ear. I hated being touched. I knew that someone's breakfast, or their hand lotion, or their pet cat could make me sick if they touched me. But my teachers told me to just ignore her, and my principal ordered me to stop using reporting her as an excuse to get out of class.
And she laughed at me. She looked so happy. I wanted to attack her and scratch her face off with my nails, but I'd been told that I would be suspended if I hurt her.
I didn't want to go anywhere alone. If I met her alone, off school grounds, I knew she'd try to kill me. But as long as I was only seeing her in the classroom she would never have a chance, and all she'd be able to do to me was imagine in my ear.
And she had friends. After a few weeks there were others who realized that no one would stop them if they wanted to threaten me. People passed me notes with threats on them, and they shouldered past me in the hall, shouting "PEANUT!" as they went. I took the notes to the office, but by now I'd so annoyed the principal that the secretaries threw me out as soon as I walked in the door. My English teacher was the only one who took the notes seriously, and she called their parents herself instead of trying to go through the principal.
I started getting sick much more often than before. My teachers got mad at me, said this was just my latest excuse to get out of class. I'd always gotten skin rashes, always felt a little off, but now it was like I was always prickly, always gray, always on the edge of sick. I wanted to tear the skin off my fingers or slam my hands in a door, do something to them because they always hurt now.
I started wearing long sleeves, and I pulled them over my hands before I touched anything. It made me feel better.
And I got used to death threats. I learned to recognize the voice of boredom and the voice of hatred and know which threats I should fear. And I learned to pretend I felt fine, and to quickly get out of the way of someone who wanted to touch me.
And sometime in eighth grade, they stopped caring. I got boring. And the girl who I'd been so sure would kill me seemed to hit some kind of anger wall, and she lashed out at everyone, and now she was the one being bullied.
But I spent a year afraid for my life, and none of my teachers cared. I told my parents a few times, when it got bad, when I was really angry, and they called the school and my teachers brushed them off and didn't actually do anything, and it upset them so much I just stopped bringing it up.
And people still threatened me, every now and then, when they felt like it.
I guess that's why they thought it would be okay to hurt my service dog.
That's why I left, you know. Someone kicked my service dog. And my teachers didn't see anything wrong with it.
So now I have a blog.
What else am I supposed to do?

What the eff happened?

Something that has puzzled me for many years: why do so many people think I'm a liar?
My parents did what all good parents are supposed to do. They got in touch with my school every year, made sure all my teachers knew about my allergy, dropped off a doctor's note saying I should be able to carry an EpiPen, and generally reminded everyone not to poison their daughter. So what the eff happened to convince a very vocal portion of the community that I'm boldly faking it for attention???
I've had teachers who were wonderful, and I've had friends who were wonderful, but I've also been approached by people who want me to know they think I'm a lying sack of crap.
One of my assigned guidance counselors, when I asked her to help me with some kids who were taunting me about peanuts, told me that it was because they knew what I was saying was ridiculous, and if I dropped the whole peanut thing and ate school lunch like a normal person everyone would like me again. My art teacher, although she seemed to like me, never understood why I wanted her to check ingredients lists, and I was constantly storming out of the art room under an irritated black cloud because she'd brought us yet another snack I couldn't be in the room with. Kids have come up to me in the lunch room or the halls and asked me why I'm so dramatic about my allergy, and I've been issued one or two detentions, which I opted not to show up for, because I left a room to go to the nurse to get treatment for a reaction the teacher didn't believe I was having. So what did I do to convince these people that I'm a liar?
And not everyone stops the conspiracy train with the idea that I crave the spotlight. In a terrifying shouting match with a teacher I was very intimidated by, I was asked why I felt the need to control everyone around me. All this because I asked him if, this time, he could bring us a candy I could have too. And when I got my service dog the shit really hit the fan, with people snarling at me that it must be wonderful for me to be able to bring my pet to school.
I have wondered for years and I am really at a loss for explanations, what did I do?!?!?!?!
For a while, even after leaving school, I secretly feared I was all the things they'd said I was. That subconsciously I really did want attention.
Then I read about the conflict in Florida.
For those of you who didn't follow it, a group of parents decided to protest the security measures an elementary school had put in place to protect a six-year-old with peanut allergies. And I mean protest protest, as in, they stood outside with signs. Because of a six-year-old girl.
So now I'm hopeful that maybe it's the world that's crazy and not me. Kind of like that line from one of the more poorly-written episodes of Star Trek, "If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"
Well, maybe there is something wrong with the universe if it's so determined to be angry with allergic children. So what can I do to change the world, besides blog about it?

The candy shop

I used to love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was even my favorite movie for a while, until I discovered Pokemon. I used to wish that a candy shop would open in my town so I could stop there on the way home from school like Charlie did.

It took me a few years to realize that I should probably stop making that wish because even if one did open I wouldn't be able to go. In elementary school I frequently irritated my teachers by approaching them just after lunch and whining that "my chin itched," which was seven-year-old speak for "I'm having an allergic reaction and it itches like hell, mostly on my hands and arms and also my elbows and where I've been leaning my head on my hand." Then they had to send me to the bathroom with orders to take a sponge bath in the sink, and while I was gone write up a note for the lunch monitor reminding them, once again, not to seat me near anyone who had peanuts! Somehow, even though I was very aware I was allergic to peanuts, and couldn't be anywhere near peanuts, and couldn't eat lots of different candies because of peanuts, it took a while for me to figure out that I wouldn't be able to stroll into a candy shop like a normal kid.

Which is why I was just a little annoyed last year when my wish very tardily came true. 

My mother and pretty much everyone else knew about this long before I did, and by the time I'd heard about it from a friend my mother, who actually reads the newspaper, had already called them and asked if they used peanuts at all. Her question was me with a resounding yes, there were peanuts in the brownies and the cookies and the ice cream and the jars of candy they had just sitting around. So when my friend mentioned in front of her that we should stop there on our Christmas shopping, she cut in to say I probably shouldn't even think about it. 

I decided to think about it anyway, and I then decided that it would probably be alright if I just walked in with my friend and did my awkward little stand-there-and-don't-touch-anything routine. I'd perfected it over years of school field trips and parties and rewards for which we ended up at a restaurant or went out for ice cream or did something else for which I was required to stand off to the side and watch everyone else have fun. I'd gotten used to it, and I really wanted to be able to go to the candy shop with my friend and do something that normal kids do. As I recall, I hadn't yet figured out that having a service dog pretty much proved I wasn't normal and should probably stop trying before I hurt myself, and so into the candy shop we went. 

I thought it smelled very nice, and unfortunately so did my dog, although his definition of nice meant that I was going to have to praise him and/or give him a treat. He sat, signaling that he'd found some peanuts, but had trouble telling me where. We were in the middle of the room and not near any of the counters or tables, and when I asked him he pointed in several directions and then repeated his signal, as though he was trying to alert on the air itself. I patted him and rubbed his ears and told him he was a good dog, and we went over and stood next to my friend while she filled a bag with the candies she wanted to give her mother for Christmas. I coughed once into my sleeve, and my friend immediately turned to me and asked if I was alright. She was one of the few people in my town who actually believed me when I told them about my allergies, and she was probably being smarter about the whole situation than I was. I told her I was fine.

As she paid I coughed several more times, and after she'd rushed us from the shop I spent several minutes coughing so hard I was afraid I might accidentally vomit.  

So, in short, I was an idiot. It was the first stupid thing I'd done in years, but I made up for lost time with level of idiocy. At least I had the foresight not to lean on anything.

I still look in the windows when I pass that place, although I'm not dumb enough to go back in. It's really frustrating at times just how much I can't do, and what's worse is that so many people don't believe me. 

Whenever I think of the candy shop I remember a scene from a movie we watched in eighth grade History. It was about segregation, and at one point we saw a black-and-white image of a girl sadly looking through the window of a soda shop she couldn't enter. 

Sometimes I really feel different.

How I learned to respect my elders. (not really)

Most people are reasonably nice about my service dog. Some touch without asking, but since they nearly always have the decency to be embarassed when I tell them to stop it's hard to hold a grudge. However, there was one woman, who I remembered this morning on my way to the mall for some new pants, who apparently decided that acting embarassed was a stupid course of action when the whole thing was really my fault anyway, which has now earned her a post on my blog. Because I'm still pissed about it.
I live somewhere very small. Just big enough for businesses to come in and try their luck, but small enough that they're sent packing months later, completely broke. In my seventeen years I've watched five pet shops, two toy stores, one Payless, one music store, and a lot of stores I'm probably forgetting meet their doom. I spend a lot of time hoping that the book store isn't going next, and it's just passed the four year mark so I'm cautiously optimistic that it's going to be ok.
Back in January I went to the mall with a friend. We wandered around for about twenty minutes before going into the novelty shop that had arrived five months ago. We looked at some figurines and some stress balls and some large light-up plant-type things, and we were holding up some stretchy shirts and laughing about them when the one adult manning the store came up behind me and began petting my dog. I turned around and told her to stop. My next sentence was going to be about how my dog is a service dog and they can't be petted, but I only got part of it out before being severely scolded for my rudeness. Shocked, I looked up from my dog and saw that her expression suggested she was sucking on a lemon seasoned with Dramamine that had said something nasty about her mother. Surely, I thought, she was angry because my friend and I had been being loud, not because I'd told her not to pet my dog.
Nope, actually. It was the dog.
My friend stepped up beside me and told her politely that not even she could pet my dog, that was just how service dogs work. She cut her off as well to further criticize my social skills and say that the way I'd spoken to her had been horribly rude and I obviously had no respect for my elders. Beginning to panic, I stammered something about how respect didn't play into it, she just couldn't pet my service dog, it said so on his jacket. Once again, she talked over me about my rudeness, this time adding that I should be ashamed of myself. And then she threw me out of the store.
For telling her not to pet my dog, she threw me out of the store.
I was pretty sure that was illegal in some way, and tried to say so. She repeated that I was rude and that I should learn to respect my elders. Then she pointed toward the door and pursed her lemon-sucking lips even tighter. I considered asking to speak to her supervisor. I considered pulling out my cell phone and threatening to call the police and ask if she was allowed to throw me out for this. I considered behaving like the teenager I was and leaving in a storm of profanity. Not being particularly brave, the method of exit I chose was to gape at her for a few seconds, then slink out the door with my cheeks burning and blood pounding in my ears.
My friend and I found a new store to be loud in, occasionally tossing her more offensive statements back and forth and listing all the reasons she was a bitch. And then we realized something sobering. I'd left my coat in the store.
We returned to find it lying on the counter and the woman determinedly ignoring us as she fiddled with the register. Having had time to think about what I should have done, I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me she was in charge here. I told her I was sorry if I'd offended her but service dogs just can't be petted. She told me, again, that I was rude and needed to respect my elders and threw me (and my coat) out of the store. Again.
By this time I'd overcome my initial fight-or-flight response to having and authority figure so angry at me and decided that I was no longer scared and was instead pissed as hell. I saw no disrespect in telling her she couldn't pet my dog and was unimpressed by her continual use of the "I'm your elder" card, in my opinion only slightly less irritating than the "It's because I'm black" card. My friend and I went down the the mall office intending to file a complaint, but found a sign saying that it was only staffed on the dates listed on the door, the day we were there not being one of them, and that if we wanted to report something we would need to call the listed number. So we got out my cell phone and called the listed number, got an answering machine, and discovered from the message that we needed to be able to tell them the name of the store. So my friend ran off again to find out what it was while I sat on the floor outside the empty office in the ghost town of a mall that apparently ran itself. Once we had the name we called again and left the message.
Two weeks later the store went out of business. I'm not going to pretend I was sad.