Leah Duong
Professor Butcher
ENG 260-1: Writing Essays
November 6th, 2014
Life As We Know It was another typical summer day for her: work in the morning and getting off at noon. It was hot that day, around mid-80 degree Fahrenheit, but at least, she was in Colorado and not Ohio, where she went for college. The humidity in Ohio bugged her so much. She hated how sweaty she got just from walking to classes. The stickiness of the body made her uncomfortable just being in her own skin. However, all that did not matter at that moment because she was soaking wet, actually, they were soaking wet. Her younger brother, Bobby, worked with her at the pool. They work as lifeguards and gave swim lessons. She taught four classes that day. The students all ranged from three to six year old. There was, particularly, this little boy around the age of five who would not stop splashing water at her and the others, which was a handful to deal with, but she soon got that situation under control. Fair to say, Lindsey had always been good with children; that was why she wanted to go for Early Education. Just two more years, and she would start living her childhood dream. It had been a long morning, for both her and Bobby. She hushed him to drive faster. She could not wait to get home, to lay on her queen size bed for the rest of the day. Her stomach started to growl. Thinking about it, she hadn’t had a chance to put anything into it yet. To her surprise, there was an opened box of chewy bars in the backseat. She couldn’t remember how it got there, but it might just be either one of her parents who put it there, so she grabbed the first one that she could get her hand on. Lindsey tuned in the radio; the country station was on, like always. It’s that elm shade, red rust clay you grew up on that plowed-up ground that your dad damned his luck, the two jammed out to the lyrics of Florida Georgia Line’s “Dirt”. It felt like old times: two of them, Holly pool, and country music. Bobby was the closest sibling to her. Being one year apart, having around the same height, and being composed of similar features - blonde hair, green eyes, freckles on the cheeks, a lot had mistaken them for being twins. They used to spend almost every time of the day together, but college separated them: she was a rising junior at Ohio Wesleyan and he was a sophomore at Wyoming University. However, moments like this made them forget that they were ever apart. She was so hungry that she didn’t bother to check what flavor the chewy bar was. She unwrapped it and took a bite. This one had a really interesting and unfamiliar taste. She could not find the words to describe it, but it was different. Yet, the smell was slightly familiar. Her tongue started tingling. Her lips felt as if a thousand ants were biting on it. Something funny was going on. She flipped the cover over to read: “Peanut bu…” That was enough for her to spit out what she was chewing. “What the heck is wrong with you?”, Bobby screamed.
“Shit!”, she let out while looking for water.
Luckily, there was a water bottle in the backseat. She used it as a mouthwash, spitting the water out the window. She couldn’t care less about the consequence of her action; she was on the edge of dying. She used her fingers to scrape the rest of that deadly peanut crumbs off her tongue before she could accidentally swallow it. Digging in her purse, she pulled out the Benadryl that she had with her 24/7 and took one tablet as soon as possible. When that is settled, she told her brother that it was a peanut butter chewy bar.
“Are you okay? What is wrong with you? Why didn’t you read it before you put it in your mouth?”, Bobby was worried as well as freaking out. That was the first time he was in such a situation. He knew that his sister was allergic to peanut, and it could kill her, but he had never witnessed her having a reaction. So he got scared of not knowing what to do or how to handle the situation. It became difficult to focus on the road.
“Do you need to go the hospital?”
“No, I took Benadryl. Just take me home please.”
They got home. Her mom, who was at home, was yelling at her. However, Lindsey just booked it to the bathroom to wash her hands and brush her teeth. The Benadryl started to kick in, and she felt drowsy. As soon as she laid her head onto her pillow, she was knocked out.
She woke up, and it was almost seven o’clock. Her stomach was growling still. She felt nausea. She tried to hold it in, but it refused to stay there, so she ran to bathroom and threw up whatever there was left inside her poor stomach into the toilet. After there was no more, she sat back and leaned on to the bathroom wall. Her entire body couldn’t stop shaking. Well, this is the worst reaction so far, she laughed to herself. Lindsey was not surprised, or shocked. This was just another, as she called it, “story of my life”.
The last time Lindsey had such a bad reaction to peanut was when she was ten. Coming back from dance class around 9pm, she saw her mom’s coke can on the coffee table and took a sip. Little did she knew, her mom was eating peanuts while drinking that coke. So this was a secondhand contact to peanut. She started feeling itchy in her throat and all over her body. Small ugly hives started to grow on her shoulder caps, and quickly spread down her arms and her back. Her cheeks started to swell and felt hard. Her whole face was hot. Her body was experiencing an adrenaline rush - her heart was beating faster than normal. She screamed for her mom. Realizing what had happened, her mom gave her Benadryl right away and put her to bed. The next day, her parents took her to see a doctor, and he gave her an antihistamine shot.
“You are very lucky this time. But just keep in mind that every time you come in contact with peanut, the reaction will be worse and worse”, he said.
However, peanut was not the only “forbidden” food. Until the age of fourteen, Lindsey was allergic to quite a number of protein food: beef, pork, egg, peanut, shellfish, and milk, as well as wheat as soy. It was pretty amazing how this girl survived and made it through twenty years of life. Her parents discovered about her allergies when she was six months old, after being fed baby food for the first time. They came to know that she was allergic to fourteen different types of food. The doctors did not believe that she could survive to the age of six because she needed the protein, vitamins, and minerals in baby food. So just like that, Lindsey grew up living off of special formula, rice, and chicken.
Even then, when she was a college student, she still got random hives on her body or swollen lips once in a while without knowing the reason, and Benadryl was the solution. It had always knocked her out earlier than she had wanted to. As annoying as it could be, her allergies taught her how to be more sensitive, alert, and responsible. She would know whether there was something going on with her body before it got too late and dangerous. Lindsey also created a habit of reading the ingredients list carefully before eating and asking the waiter about peanut before ordering. And this one time of carelessness and subjectiveness was an example of how thin of a line that her life was on.
More importantly, she knew exactly how it felt like to grow up differently from her peers. Bobby was the lucky one, who grew up like every other kid, carefree and healthy. It was not until the age of fourteen that Lindsey could have her first bite of hamburger, pizza, ice cream, or cake. Having to do two allergy tests a year and regular blood work until college, she was constantly in the hospital getting check-ups for nutrients. Perhaps, that was the reason for her being a late bloomer: a tenth-grader in the body and face of a sixth grader. And perhaps, that was why she was good around children, especially the bad-having ones or attention-seeking ones, for she understood perfectly how difficult it was to not be the same.
She got up from the floor and took another tablet of Benadryl just to be safe. Lindsey went downstairs to find her family in the living room, watching their usual TV show, concerning “crazy” life of the guys who produced the nation’s famous duck calls. It was Bobby’s favorite. Her mom called her to come sit by her on the couch, and after snuggling in next to her, Lindsey passed out before she knew it.