When you’re at a restaurant and you don’t want something on your food, let’s say you’re ordering a salad but you hate tomatoes, you would ask for them to take them off the salad. Right? Well it’s kind of the same thing with my allergy. Except the thing is, I hate talking to people I don’t know. Shocking, right. But it’s true, I literally used to have my parents order my food for me. It was a problem, just ask my parents.

In my opinion, the worst part of ordering is when I have to tell them I have a peanut allergy. They kind of just stare at me as if they are saying, “what do you want me to do about it?” Like I’m not asking you to cure it! This leads to there being a couple moments of awkward silence until they just move on with their life. That’s why I like to stick to restaurants I’ve already been to, so that I know their food is safe. And why I hate going to different restaurants, because I have to go through all of the awkward silence scenarios again. 

I had this experience one time in Michigan. To set the scene a little bit, I was visiting my grandparents and cousins by Lansing, Michigan when we decided to stop for lunch at a local Mexican restaurant. No one thought twice about this choice seeing as we were all starving. Fast forward a couple minutes to when we are ordering our food. I happen to be the last one to order, so when she gets to me, she looks like she was questioning her life choices. Serving 10 people had to be tough. I didn’t want to lay anything else on her so I “forgot” to mention that I have a peanut allergy. After a while I get kind of anxious and build up the courage to tell her. Turns out they make all of their seasonings with peanut oil, and all I can have is a cheese quesadilla. Fun. Moral of the story, don’t go to Michigan.