When you register your kid for school, no matter the age, you get inundated with forms, announcements, declarations, and checklists in all the colors of the papergoods rainbow. After going through a few rounds with Poppy, I felt equipped to sift through the ream when registering London for kindergarten. I’ve learned to throw out flyers for any clubs or activities that include petsitting and keep the ones that reveal actual days off or further restrictions to a dress code that is growing closer and closer to Chairman Mao’s uniform dream for the masses. Schools are forever trying to find fresh ways (and fonts) to coerce parents to actually read the missals they send home. Some schools require you to sign off on every single sheet; others employ cutesy clipart stolen from some 1950s advertising campaign intended to highlight the exciting new and improved lunch menu.
The parents manning the registration tables on my day made sure I noticed this one specific sheet that was a shocking shade of urine yellow. I dumped some irrelevant paperwork in a nearby trash can and read the memorandum that said that a child entering kindergarten had severe nut allergies and parents could not bring in communal snacks that had any ingredient remotely relating to nuts. The list of forbidden fixings and products was longer than the roster for London’s class. I have friends whose children have such allergies so I know how dangerous they can be. As I read on about symptoms and ways to transmit, all I could think of was London’s sole request for lunch this year: peanut butter and jelly. The school suggested we might sneak other menu items in London’s Scooby Doo lunchbox but they made no demands. Saying London is a finicky eater is like saying Nicole Richie is a little thin and all the dolmas, soy pudding, and rice cakes won’t change that.
When I got home, I called my friend Drew about my dilemma. His son has severe allergies and has gone to great lengths to keep his Allergy Boy in a nut-free universe. They have absolutely no nut or seed products in their home and have flown only once with A.B. (and a box of sanitizing wipes) on the earliest flight to avoid nut contamination. I asked Drew if he thought packing London a PBJ made me an uncaring parent in a hypersensitive world.
“When you have an allergy kid,” he said, “you can only control him. You can’t control other people. In a class, it’s up to the teacher to make sure no one infects anyone else.”
“So we’re not callous, heartless people?”
“Let me tell you a story.” At Drew’s daughter Dayna’s last birthday party, they hired a magician. Since Allergy Boy wants to be near the action (and his sister) he sat on the floor only inches from the performer. The guy goes through his routine that includes a penny that magically rises and a CD that changes colors. Then, toward the end, he asks the crowd, Does anyone like peanut butter and jelly? and pulls out the largest jar of peanut butter that Drew and his wife Sue had ever seen.
“What did you do?” I asked, almost in anaphylactic shock myself.
“Nothing. It was too late. We froze and watched to make sure none of the stuff fell onto him.”
“What was the trick?”
“I don’t remember. You’re not getting the point.”
“What’s the point again?” I was still trying to imagine performing an illusion with something London likes cut into four equal parts.
“You can’t control everything. We tell friends not to bring nuts into the house or serve them at their parties. We haul food everywhere for the boy. Who’d think to ask a magician if any of his tricks involve peanut butter?”
“Right,” I said. “That is nuts.”
“Now you’re getting it,” he said and hung up.