Oooh, I'm embarrassed.

Poodleface and I went to see a display of Christmas trees in town, and for the second time, someone snuck up on him and startled him enough that he barked.
I am so embarrassed.
This time instead of an adult creeping toward him at a museum it was a small child who ran two circles around him before leaning over and trying to see his jacket. I probably wouldn't be quite as embarrassed, but only a few minutes before I'd been explaining to an event coordinator that my dog is a service dog and has to be allowed in.
I know this isn't my fault, but I feel like somehow it is.

What's wrong with me? I mean, besides the whole peanut thing...

I really hated myself for a while.
Whenever I mentioned my allergies at school people would groan and roll their eyes and ask me if I could please just drop it, just stop, why did I keep doing this? Whenever I got up and left a classroom the teacher would ask me if it was really necessary and the whole class would start whispering about me. Not to mention the death threats and the teasing and the way people liked to shout "PEANUT!" as I passed in the hallway.
There was this one day, about three weeks before I left school, that made me so mad I literally did see red. Poodleface and I were going to lunch along with a third of the school. Everyone, myself included, was wearing a really heavy backpack because the school issued us laptops, and backpacks to go with those laptops, and we were required to use them so that the laptops would stay protected. But the bottom of the bag was reinforced and wouldn't bend and was too big to fit in a locker, so we had to carry them everywhere for the whole day. There was also a rule that said that we couldn't take them into the cafeteria, so we tossed them in a pile at the door, which pissed the teachers off but it wasn't like we had a choice. At the beginning of the year someone had figured out that if you grabbed the handle of someone's backpack and gave it a light tug it would overbalance them and they would fall over. When I first felt my center of gravity shift dramatically backwards that's what I thought was happening, but the boy who'd yanked my bag caught me before I fell. So there I was, in his arms, unable to see who it was because he was behind me, wondering what the hell he was doing and why he was holding me so gently. We stood like that for a few seconds, and then he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "peanut." Then he set me back on my feet and when I turned around he was gone, thus completing the most intimate insult I have ever gotten.
What really pissed me off is that no other boy had ever held me like that. Other girls who share my social standing get sexually harassed, but all anyone ever shouted at me was "peanut." I wasn't even a girl anymore, they hated me so much.
They hated me for being allergic to peanuts, and they acted like I was doing it deliberately and they wished I'd just stop.
So why didn't I stop? Why didn't I just stop it? I wanted to stop, I really did. I wanted to cry and lay  on the ground and say I was sorry, I was really sorry, I hadn't meant to do it, it just happened, I couldn't stop it, I was so, so sorry and I understood that they hated me and wanted to hurt me, I hated myself too.
I left school because my only other alternative was to start harming myself.

Things that make me wince

• Loud, smiling women who rush over to me in public and begin with a joyful, "Oh, my sister had a chihuahua with fur just that shade!", and proceed to ignore my escape tactics and lack of eye contact and regale me with little Toby's life story. (While some people with service dogs are probably dog lovers, I, personally, just want to finish my shopping.)
• Unsupervised children running nearby. They tend to gravitate toward a dog, and more than once I've accidentally made one cry by telling them not to pet it. The situation only gets worse should the absent parents pick that moment to appear. (True story; a mother once screamed at me in the middle of the produce aisle because her toddler had flung himself on the floor and was crying. He was crying because I told him not to touch my dog, and then (gently) removed his hand when he touched my dog anyway.)
• Whistling and clicking noises or other dog-calling behavior. Seriously, that's not cool. It's humiliating and irritating and very, very dangerous if they decide to do it to a more critical kind of service dog. Also, there's no way to get in the person's face about it without looking like I'm over-reacting. 
• Barking, from other dogs. My Poodleface is wonderfully behaved, but he's still a dog, and I'm uncomfortable in situations where his self-control is being tested.
• Barking, from other humans. Okay, that's just mean.
• NO DOGS ALLOWED signs. I see one of those and I know there's going to be a confrontation. I get to explain to some under-informed and probably under-paid employee how service dogs are exempt from that rule, and then I get to explain that yes, I'm allowed to have a service dog even though I'm not blind. 
• People who I swear I've never seen before who say I had a long and informative discussion about service dogs with them two months ago. Apparently I'm the only girl in town who goes everywhere with a white poodle and therefore very easy to recognize. 

Also, it's not easy to remember who you've given a speech to if you've given it about five hundred times.

• Mothers who have their babies say "doggie" as I pass.

Okay, I know I'm in the minority on that one because it's happened so many times it MUST be considered normal, but really, it bugs me. What if I was in a wheelchair? Would it still be okay to have a baby say it? 

What irritates me the most about this one is that I don't know how to get them to understand that I don't like it. I've tried just going over to them and saying "Excuse me, I find that offensive. Could you please stop?" But it doesn't work. They just look at me like I've requested something bizarre, or like I'VE said something offensive. Obvious eye rolling or annoyed body language doesn't work either, and neither does irritated sarcasm. It's a situation I don't know how to deal with, but that I'm apparently not supposed to feel I need to deal with. Am I really the only one it bugs?

And, finally, the thing that makes me wince the most,

• People who say, "But an allergy isn't a disability!