Picture it - summer 1987: I'm five-years-old; I've just finished kindergarten; Andy Warhol is recently dead; Kurt Vonnegut releases Bluebeard (my favorite Vonnegut book); and I'm allergic to strawberries. What a summer it was.
Yes, I was allergic to strawberries. This was the first year of this allergy. Doctors could quite explain it. "Sometimes you just develop an allergy," they told us. Develop it is exactly what I did, to the tune of hives.
It wasn't that bad: red splotches and itching. My mom would still buy strawberries, which were of course off limits to me. Like any good five-year-old, I thought I knew best, so I would eat them only when no one was looking. Somehow she always knew. No matter how much I would stand there denying the action and scratching my hives, she always knew.
No strawberries made the summer of 1987 one of the longest and most difficult summers of my life.
Fast forward - summer 1988. Again, strawberries in the refrigerator. My mom walks into the kitchen to find me eating them. This time I know not to deny: I've been caught red (literally, thanks to strawberry juice) handed. But then something very strange happened, or didn't happen: there were no hives.
Indeed, in the summer of 1988 I could eat strawberries. To this day, I've not had another problem with strawberries. This is good, because they're berry delicious.
Picture it - summer 1987: I'm five-years-old; I've just finished kindergarten; Andy Warhol is recently dead; Kurt Vonnegut releases Bluebeard (my favorite Vonnegut book); and I'm allergic to strawberries. What a summer it was.
Yes, I was allergic to strawberries. This was the first year of this allergy. Doctors could quite explain it. "Sometimes you just develop an allergy," they told us. Develop it is exactly what I did, to the tune of hives.
It wasn't that bad: red splotches and itching. My mom would still buy strawberries, which were of course off limits to me. Like any good five-year-old, I thought I knew best, so I would eat them only when no one was looking. Somehow she always knew. No matter how much I would stand there denying the action and scratching my hives, she always knew.
No strawberries made the summer of 1987 one of the longest and most difficult summers of my life.
Fast forward - summer 1988. Again, strawberries in the refrigerator. My mom walks into the kitchen to find me eating them. This time I know not to deny: I've been caught red (literally, thanks to strawberry juice) handed. But then something very strange happened, or didn't happen: there were no hives.
Indeed, in the summer of 1988 I could eat strawberries. To this day, I've not had another problem with strawberries. This is good, because they're berry delicious.
A Summer Berry Long Ago
This post hints at Oral Allergy Syndrome...wonder if pollens were bad in '87.
ReplyDeleteAre you pollen-sensitive? if not, it doesn't matter what pollen levels were doing in '87.
ReplyDelete