definite and indefinite allergies

i can feel it – the allergic reaction i have to most raw fruit – starting to tickle the back of my throat. serves me right, but this summer it’s been so humid occasionally that i refuse to cook, and eat fruit instead. ok, i just eat a bunch of fruit for dinner fairly often.

i didn’t always have this weird allergy – it developed while i was in high school. suddenly i was allergic to most raw fruit, basically everything except for grapes, citrus fruit, raspberries, and um…yeah, that’s kind of it. i’m even very slightly allergic to bananas and cantaloupe. go figure. unfortunately, included in the realm of allergy-inducing foods are my favorite fruits: plums, cherries, and peaches. now, it’s true that this particular allergy (other allergies include pollen, dust, alcohol, and cats) is not particularly violent, unlike my life-threatening allergy to alcohol. however, it’s quite enough to make me sorry for eating the offending fruit. so really, for the past several years, i’ve always eaten cooked fruit.

this is a sorry situation to be thrown into, and in the past several months i’ve lifted my moratorium on fresh fruit, figuring that it’s been quite long enough without it, and i’d deal with the consequences. besides, it’s summer – the best months for produce – and i wasn’t prepared to let it pass me by for another year. first i discovered that i am no longer allergic to watermelon, or apples if they’re peeled. i still am allergic to strawberries, which is ok because i don’t like them that much anyway, but also plums, peaches, and cherries. when i was living in seattle, i once pitted five pounds of cherries i’d bought at the market, and i really regretted it – the allergic reaction took its toll on my hands, which were achy yet itchy for days afterwards. anyway, the sudden changes in my allergies really make me wonder how much psychology (in the way that placebos sometimes work in clinical trials) affects allergies. there are definite allergies – like the one to alcohol (if i drink too fast, my throat closes up and i die; that one’s not going away for a long time) – but i wonder if my fresh fruit allergy is something that is affected by whether or not i think i’m allergic.

at any rate, i’m enjoying the summer season of produce, even if it annoys me sometimes with the tickle of allergies. after such a long time going without, it’s kind of exciting to eat a plum again and have more than just a memory of what a plum tastes like. actually, it’s pretty fricking awesome to know what a plum tastes like for real. it’s one of those things where you didn’t know you were missing out as much as you were.