Peanuts may sound like an odd source of phobia, but they have taken on an absurd bogeyman quality for me since my daughter was taken to hospital by ambulance after eating peanut butter when she was six months old. Just the sight of a bowl on a pub bar, or their shells discarded on the pavement, can raise my heart rate – even when I’m not with her. Nowhere is the sight of peanuts more confronting than at 30,000ft, especially now when millions are jetting back from their holidays.
Travelling with a severely allergic child can be a nightmare for all sorts of reasons, but the idea you could be sat next to a passenger consuming the very thing that has hospitalised them is its own kind of hell. Most airlines will make an announcement asking passengers to avoid consuming nuts if you let them know that somebody in your party has a severe nut allergy. But I brace for impact when these announcements are piped out.
On almost every flight there is at least one passenger who sighs or makes some inane comment, loud enough for everyone to hear, about how annoying it is. Oh, I’m sorry – is not being able to eat nuts for a few hours inconveniencing you? Does one passenger’s desire to consume peanut M&M’s trump someone else’s right to stay alive?
I didn’t realise the right to eat nuts was a civil liberties issue. And yet, people get disproportionately upset about being told not to eat things. Chloë Dickson, who runs the Instagram account peanutfreezone, recently posted a horrifying video of her experience flying with a severe peanut allergy and a man behind her responding, “Really?” to an announcement asking passengers not to eat nuts.
He “then proceeded to make comments throughout the entire journey about eating peanuts around me, along with two other people nearby,” the caption reads. I am mystified by this mean-spiritedness. Allergies are not a lifestyle choice but a medical condition.
And yet, they seem to inspire a lack of empathy in the public consciousness. Perhaps it’s due to a misunderstanding of what allergy actually is. For people such as Chloe and my daughter, we’re not talking about skin irritation or a dodgy stomach, however unpleasant that might be.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
