Nerdy's Homebase

ryland comes home to their father waterboarding colt and he doesn't know how long this has been going on but colt is drenched and choking and if he doesn't get colt out of their father's hands now, he's not sure if—

he's moving before he's aware of it. but he's not moving to where their father is about to murder his brother. no, he's going upstairs and into their father's room—a bedside drawer that really only has one thing in it

their father yells something at colt (still somehow oblivious to ryland's presence) and pulls colt's head back under the running water and ryland's right arm is so heavy but he tries to keep it steady—

vaguely, he's aware that the front door opened and their father finally turning around—

ryland recoils from the force of it, his ears are ringing

the hand around colt loosens and then two bodies hit the floor

then there's a hand on his and he instinctively grips the gun tighter—a face appears in front of him, similar to his own but a little older

court. it's court who's trying to take the gun from him and so ryland lets him. court's mouth is moving but ryland can't make anything of it, he's just aware that court is wiping down the gun with his shirt before he fits it into his own hand

he pushes ryland towards colt who's still gasping and wheezing but alive

I have never seen another allergy that has been so viscerally hated and mocked by people working in education like nut allergies. I’ve seen fellow teachers cringe that their classroom was the “nut free” classroom that year. Support staff that are trained and willfully don’t follow cross contamination protocol in the lunchroom because it’s too “tedious” or “time-consuming”. Full preschools + childcare centers that refuse to accommodate nut allergies. Schools where the only free lunch is a PB&J. Before/after school programs and summer programs whose food curriculum has nuts and doesn’t provide an alternative activity.

Allergy discrimination is so so insidious and prevalent. It’s happening behind their back and it is everything from the exposure joke to possibly causing someone to go into anaphylaxis from willful ignorance.

I was not downplaying this. The stigma is real, and people are 100% willing to let people with allergies die.

When my mom tried to enroll me in preschool, the school principal refused any basic accommodations like asking everyone to wash their hands after lunch before re-entering the classroom, not bringing straight up peanuts to snack time, etc. There was no such thing as a nut free classroom at the time. The principal told my mom and me (I was 4 at the time and definitely in the room when this happened) “if she’s so sick, she belongs in a bubble, not at school.” THE FUCKING PRINCIPAL! My mom had to threaten legal action under the ADA to get them to comply.

Look, I was on a 504 accommodation plan under the ADA for the entirety of my formative education (elementary thru high school). That’s all 12 years!!! And yet I have had teachers hand me items I’m allergic to as a “reward”. I have had other kids intentionally try to send me into anaphylaxis. One girl in 3rd grade asked me why I “wasn’t dead yet” when she had put on a lotion with almonds in it and then held my hand. I’ve had other parents write letters to the school saying what a terrible inconvenience it was to them to not be able to send their kiddo to school with PB&J, demanding I be Removed to a special education only class if my “needs” were such a “burden” to others. During elementary school “parties” held in the classroom on holidays and for student birthdays, I was always sent to sit out in the hallway or go to the library, because even though parents were only supposed to bring safe foods into the room (they had a list of all my allergies) they never once got it right. Administrators fought me tooth and nail for the right to carry my epi pen and other meds on my person at all times. Why they thought I would start dealing benadryl on the playground, I do not know. At lunch, I was always sat at a specific segregated table labeled the “Nut Free Table” alone because who the fuck is going to sit there with the literally segregated outcast? But ONCE notably I was sat on one side of a line of blue masking tape down the table top with the rest of my class on the other. One side was the NUTS side!!! As if allergens would respect that tape barrier. (Spoiler alert: they do NOT!)

Literally from preschool to my senior year of high school, I was “the peanut kid”. Other parents gave my mom books about how to “cure your child’s food allergies from HOME” by micro dosing with things they are allergic to (please never ever ever even attempt anything like a food challenge with a known allergen outside of the care and supervision of a medical professional, holy shit that’s so dangerous). My mom joined the PTA in my last year of high school so that I could maybe participate in all the senior-focused events like pool parties and breakfast at school on the first Friday of the month. The number of times another parent either (a) decided it wasn’t worth it to care or (b) intentionally brought peanut products to an event to spite either me or my mom??? I literally could not count. It happened constantly.

College was better, but I still occasionally had people BALK when I asked them to please not eat a Nature Valley bar with whole nuts in it right the fuck next to me in lecture, thanks. Work parties and catered lunches were always impossible. A few conferences I went to as an undergrad were SUPPOSED to be nut-free, but always fucked up the catering. At one, they set up snack tables by every exit of the conference auditorium so that when people left after the talk, they all congregated around the exits and opened macadamia nut cookies and granola bars. When I had subsequently had a massive allergic reaction and needed help getting home (I’d walked) after taking like 200mg of benadryl, the staff offered me a stack of napkins and a lukewarm apology.

Food allergy is a disability which touches literally every aspect of a person’s life. Everytime I share with someone new about what it was like growing up with my allergies, they have never heard anything like it in their lives. They’re always like “holy shit, seriously??? People did that??? Kids tried to kill you??? Parents wanted you kicked out of the classroom????” Yeah, man. Yeah. My own brother (who doesn’t have any allergies at all) doesn’t understand why I don’t “eat more adventurously” and why I won’t travel internationally. So, saying it REALLY LOUDLY for people in the back:

When on the flight Amy was fed bread that contained multiple things she was allergic to. The packaging was completely unlabled and she was never offered an allergy warning before or during the 13 hour flight. She had an allergic reaction and had a very hard time breathing and had to take the ONE epipen she had access to for this whole trip that day. She would not be able to get a new one. The flight attendants did not give a singular fuck about what happened to her and the position she was put in because of their carelessness.

Fast forward to the end of the trip. Luckily Amy had no further incidents during the trip. We get on the plane for the flight home and Amy asks about the food for the flight and if she can have the ingredients list. She also makes it clear to the flight attendants that this is really important because she has already had an incident and no longer has her epipen.

Do you want to know what the flight attendants did?

They kicked her off the plane. They kicked a seventeen year old off a plane and left her behind in an unfamiliar city because they would rather not deal with her disability. She delayed the flight for several minutes begging and crying for them to not leave her there. She told them she had no way of accessing a new epipen here, but they said she couldn’t fly without it. Me and my friend who were sitting next to her held her and argued with the flight attendant to keep her on the plane. She sobbed as she said she could just not eat anything, or that she could eat what she brought aboard. They still kicked her off. Bless the chaperone that chose to stay behind with her so she wouldn’t be alone.

You want to know the most fucked up part after that? The flight attendant who kicked her off was amused about the whole thing like it was some funny joke. Another one complained that “In all his years of working this job he had never been so disrespected.”

Amy and the chaperone ended up sleeping at that airport over night before they could get on another flight. I don’t remember if she was able to get another epipen for the flight home but I think she was.

AND SAY IT LOUDER FOR THOSE WITH THEIR HEADS UP THEIR BUTTS!!

fr tho. I’m allergic to shellfish and my sib is allergic to many nuts & peanuts, AND eggs. We discovered Sib’s allergies when Sib was a toddler. We discovered mine the summer before I turned 14. Luckily, our allergens must be ingested for them to be dangerous, but when Sib was little, their immune system’s sensitivity to the allergens was such that if sib merely had a drop of mayonnaise on the lip, they’d have an allergic reaction. Nuts are anaphylaxis, an epi-pen, and a trip to the ER, and has only gotten more lethal over the years. Eggs were immediate puffy lips and projectile vomit, now it’s much milder, but still a mess to clean up. My shellfish reaction is severe pain in my chest and throat.

Sib often eats lobster, shrimp, etc. etc. & I often eat eggs and nuts; Pad Thai is delicious with the scrambled eggs and minced peanuts. HOWEVER we always practice anti-cross-contamination protocols. Sib & I are siblings; we jibe and verbally poke at each other about many things; our allergies are one of them. “Mmm this omelette is particularly delicious, you don’t know what you’re missing.” “This rocky road ice cream is amazing, the eggs in the cream makes it so rich and the nuts add a wonderful crunch.” “Whatever, this lobster is thicc and buttery and these fried shrimp are seasoned to perfection, too bad you can’t have any.”

But Hiccup is just like “Oh this? *shrugs* Yeah I just thought it would be helpful to have. No it’s nothing that special, see, I just had to— *cue explanation that’s hard to follow because Hiccup really honestly doesn’t realize how genius it is*”