In the not too distant past, I semi-seriously dated a guy with Celiac Disease. For those of you who don't know, Celiac's is an autoimmune digestive disease in which the body basically kung fu's itself anytime the person eats gluten. This disease can range from mild discomfort to incredibly severe. On a no-gluten scale to ten, this gentleman was around a 7.5.
Now, growing up for me, as for I think many people, all big family events revolved around eating. Birthdays, holidays, tax return days, Mondays. Any excuse to eat, we did. Dating for me a lot of times has been to go to dinner, which I personally feel like is a great way to get to know someone. Comfort food is...well, my comfort food. So dating someone who could not enjoy 99.9% of the things I like to eat was tough. No bread, no pasta. It was really eye opening how many foods we consume contain gluten.
The new normal for me was to eat and brush my teeth before the guy came over and we would go do something else. I saw a lot of movies during this time. But do you know how miserable it is to go to the movies and not get popcorn with the butter sludge? If he ever planned to spend more than a few hours with me, he had to pack a cooler with an assortment of bland foods and protein drinks. This was really hard for me because it took out a big chunk of who I am, but I figured I'd try to keep at it, because I really liked this guy.
One day we had been runing around and were both getting really hungry. He was all excited for this, because he said he had read that the tomato soup at Panera was gluten free, so we could actually go out somewhere and eat for once. Categorize this under Best Day Ever. Subcategorize this: For about 30 Minutes.
After dinner we get back to my house and this guy starts acting funny. Over the next hour he gets progressively worse to the point that I am convinced he needs to go to the ER. Being a man, he is stubborn and refuses to go, and we are both just miserable for the rest of the night. Turns out what probably happened is the unknowing food worker put the croutons in the soup, realized the order specifically said no croutons, and scooped them out. That is enough contamination to rip this guys guts to shreds.
Or it could have been because I kissed him after eating a bread bowl of mac'n'cheese.
Either way, it was a terrible night. We didn't last much longer after that. Not directly because of the food issue, but I won't lie, that didn't help things. The one good thing about all the bad dates I've been on since then, I've been able to at least enjoy a bowl of fettuccine alfredo without fearing I'm going to kill someone.
No comments:
Post a Comment