Walnut, Age 2.
My first encounter with a nut was at age two. One of my father’s colleagues was throwing a party at his house. It was a swanky affair, where the children were segregated from the adults and made to stay outside and be neither heard nor seen. These being simpler times, before children like me ruined nuts for everyone else, I was given some fancy-ass dessert with walnuts in it. I ate it and my mouth immediately began to itch.

I ran inside to tell my parents about what was going on with my mouth, and they gave me a glass of water. The hostess noticed that a child had infiltrated the house, and was being, to quote my mom, “a real bitch about it.” The fact that I was having an allergic reaction was not a good enough excuse for me to be inside her home. I drank a lot of water and the itchiness gradually disappeared, but we left the party anyway.

Cashew, Age 9.
Following the walnut incident, my parents took me for a test. A doctor pricked my back with needles covered with allergens and noted where my skin reacted. He gave my parents a list of the things I was allergic to: tree nuts (but not peanuts or almonds), ragweed pollen, cats, dogs, dust, and birch trees. I was prescribed an EpiPen and ordered to carry it around everywhere, which I sometimes remembered to do.

My aunt had a cottage near the Kawartha Lakes that we often visited. The log cabin was right on the river, where my siblings and I would spend the day drifting down the river in inner tubes. When my aunt offered me Clodhoppers one evening, I forgot about my allergy. I became pretty blasé about the whole nut allergy thing. I scoffed in the face of anaphylaxis. I ate things given to me without asking questions, shoving them into my mouth with reckless abandon. Dessert at a potluck? Hors d’oeuvres at a reception? Sandwich with pesto? Sure, why not! What’s the worst that could happen? I ate the Clodhopper. It was delicious – for a few seconds.

My aunt looked on in horror as I ran to the washroom. I puked several times before my throat started to close up. Hives sprung up on my arms. Everything itched and my eyes and nose were leaking. My mom wanted to use the EpiPen, but then it was over, before she could find it. This is when I became familiar with the guilt, the guilt of the person-who-has-accidentally-given-you-a-nut. Unlike that party hostess, my aunt was penitent, apologizing and apologizing. A similar fear flashes across the face of every server when they say, “But we can’t guarantee it hasn’t come in contact with nuts.” It’s okay. You are not to blame for the hypersensitivity of my immune system.

Hazelnuts, Age 15.
Nutella is to Italy as peanut butter is to North America. Italians love their goddamn Nutella. (I am so sick of hearing about Nutella. I get it. I know. You eat it by the spoonful. I’m missing out. My life has no meaning.) My family took a vacation to Italy on March break when I was in the tenth grade, not realizing that we were wandering into a den of hazelnuts.

The first time I encountered Nutella we were in Rome. After taking a leisurely promenade down the cobblestone streets, we entered a gelato place. A gigantic tub of Nutella was ominously perched on the counter. I got strawberry cheesecake gelato or whatever; I ate so much gelato on our trip that the flavours began to blend together. However, I clearly remember my sister’s choice: Nutella gelato.

I offered my sister a bite of my gelato, which she took. I was eating my gelato when suddenly my throat began to close up. My sister had taken a spoonful of my gelato using her spoon, and the traces of Nutella gelato from her spoon had made their way into my mouth. I had trouble breathing for about half an hour but recovered naturally. Hazelnuts are not such a bad reaction for me, but it tends to cause panic in the people around me, who are afraid that I am going to suffocate. Nothing spoils the joys of The Eternal City quite like your loved ones debating about whether or not to stab you in the thigh with an epinephrine autoinjector.

The second time in Italy that I encountered the dreaded hazelnut was in Pisa. We were staying in a lovely hotel that used to be a fort. Poor, naïve me ate a chocolate left on a pillow. Italians sure love their hazelnuts.

Mystery Nut, Age 20.
My most recent run-in with a tree nut was in Ottawa. I’m from Ontario, so I’ve been there before, but this trip was special because I was there with a group from a scholarship foundation, a mix of Canadians and Americans. When an event got cut short, we were released to freely roam the streets of the capital. Because our very fancy hotel didn’t offer free WiFi, I visited a nearby coffee shop to use their Internet. (I won’t name names, but I will say that it was not a Tim Horton’s. I don’t mean to sully a national institution.)

Carrot cake tends to have nuts in it. After eighteen years of vigilance, I’ve learned that there are certain desserts you avoid, and carrot cake is usually one of them. The coffee shop had carrot cake on display, and it looked delicious. There were also ingredients on display; hallelujah. I read the ingredients list over once, twice. No nuts were listed. Excited, I broke my rule against carrot cake and ordered it. The moment I bit into it I knew I’d been lied to. I high-tailed it back to my beautiful hotel room and proceeded to puke about five times. I’m still not exactly sure what nut was in there, though I suspect pecans were the culprit.

I called the trip organizers and told them I couldn’t make it to the next event. They wanted to know if I needed an ambulance, but I assured them I’d be fine to stay behind alone and that I had my EpiPen with me. I spent the next couple hours in the hotel room with a great view of downtown Ottawa watching “Say Yes to the Dress” and intermittently puking, instead of at the US ambassador’s house, which apparently had the nicest bathroom anyone on the trip had ever seen.

When I rejoined the group at dinner, the Americans told me I should sue.