Things I'm Allergic To

Here's what nuts do to me:

• My lips and mouth start to itch.
• The insides of my ears start to itch (a very unusual sensation).
• My lips swell up.
• In extreme cases: Hives, all over my body.
• Really extreme reaction (hasn't happened for a long time): I have trouble breathing, and my friends John and Ruth have to drag me to Cowell Hospital for an epinephrine shot.

My brother Philip thinks it's psychosomatic. That's a fair argument: our friend Tim HATES onions and will eat nothing that contains even a small amount of his accursed substance. But, if you simply don't tell him that onions are in there, he'll eat it happily. Don't tell him, but we've done that to him many a time. He's more sensitive now, though.

So, Philip will try the same thing on me: Try to slip me nuts in my cookies. When I catch on, he'll just say I'm hypersensitive and I can't really be allergic to nuts. But! But! How do you explain my EXTREME SENSITIVITY to nuts? I can tell in a very tiny bite if, for example, a chocolate chip cookie contains walnuts.

Another time, my friend Erin was cooking some packaged tortellini. I ate just a tiny bite of a tortellino, and said, "Woah, Erin, do these have NUTS in them?" She couldn't believe it. But we checked the ingredients, and sure enough, the very last ingredient was...walnuts.

I've learned about nuts now. Who would have known that filberts were nuts? Not me, until I swelled up like a balloon after eating a piece of Entemann's coffee cake, which is made with filberts. (In England filberts were always called hazelnuts, which is why I didn't know.)

If I tell you, "I'm allergic to nuts," and you respond with the line, "What are you doing hanging out with me then?" you should know that there are several hundred people before you who have made the same joke. Sorry.

These things are NOT nuts:

peanuts

They're legumes; so they're more pea than nut.

coconuts

They're more of a fruit than a nut.

beernuts

Made of corn.

Cornnuts

See "beernuts." I won't make fun of them because they're a big client of the company I used to work for. Except I'll point out that their radio advertisements are painful to listen to. ("How could something this small be this cool?" Easy: they're super-compacted.)

donuts

I used to spell this word "doughnut" and can't believe that "donut" now seems more natural to me. America has ruined my spelling habits. I always used to write "colour" too, and now I'm out of practice (I mean, practise). Donuts have as little to do with nuts as this paragraph has to do with allergies. Time to move on, I think.

[More "Facts About Zeigen"]