Tomatoes ruined my academic life… this is a true statement.

Having attended primary school in America, I must first explain something called “field trips.” Field trips are when an entire grade of students (in the U.S. can mean up to 3,000 students) is corralled onto buses and let lose on some poor unsuspecting small museum or historically significant clump of trees. Field Trips are a god send as the tend to alleviate the boredom of learning fractions for the 800th time.

The first field trip in question was to an aquarium; which in american means “an endless seafood buffet that you are encouraged to pet.” Weird, but anyway…I came home and my skin felt like it was on fire…I was covered in hives. My father immediately asked me if I rolled in the dirt. Rolled in the dirt? What am I the dog? Ewww no I did not make a habit of rolling in anything icky and nature-esque, plus I informed him I had been fondling my new aquatic friends all day. So my father just shrugged at me..”kids what can you do?”

Next fieldtrip was about architecture. Not surprisingly, I have an architect relative (seriously, I am Irish, I have thousands of relatives that cause all sorts of bother) so we were actually going to tour his old mansion (he built entirely himself) that had been turned into a museum. Lucky historians got to sort through pictures of my great aunt in a bathing suit (unfortunately NOT the side of the family with the aunt that was Miss Universe). So the day boiled down to a series of very traumatizing nearly naked pictures of my relatives adorning the walls IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE SCHOOL and in the end I came home from the trip with hives…again. This time with a note from my head mistress that said I could NO LONGER go on field trips!!! I screamed and cried. My father puzzled over the causes of the red spots on my arms and face. A rare disease? Rolling in dirt (again)? Great Aunt in scandalous pin-up pose? Then he decided it was Poison Ivy. I screamed, “I am a pretty, pretty princess, I am not frolicking in the trees!” So he searched the museum grounds, finding no offensive plants he decided that obviously the school was doing something bizarre to me that had to be stopped immediately. The next day he marched over to my school to look in on our class to see for himself what exactly was going on.

The headmistress of the school stood in front of the classroom door blocking the way of my father. She proceeded to tell my father that the cause of my hives was that I was obviously extremely nervous around large groups of people and that is why I can no longer attend field trips, Instead she felt I needed a psychiatrist. My father glanced at me in the classroom. I had moved all the chairs to face me to create and audience out of the whole class including the teacher and was standing on my desk belting out all the songs sung by Olivia Newton-John in the movie Grease. My dad turned to the headmistress and shouted, “My daughter is not scared to be in large groups of people, she sees them as musical victims! And you are a fascist pig!” Obviously THAT went well.

I spent a whole year unable to attend any out of school fun. So after being convinced for months that I was so intelligent I had begun making a sociological statement by being allergic to tourist traps my father began a series of sleuthing attempts. After his studies ceased, my father discovered I was allergic to tomatoes. This pertains because EVERYTIME the school went on a field trip they fed us pizza, therefore causing me to have an allergic reaction…hives. So thanks a lot tomatoes for ruining my life, tomatoes are just a fruit masquerading as a vegetable, obviously they cannot be trusted.

There are two high profile media types that are on my side on this tomato issue. Esteemed author and lover of cupcakes, Meg Cabot for one. Meg herself claims to be allergic to tomatoes, sources close to her claim that this is not the case, that she just claims that because she thinks tomatoes are icky. Word Homie! Meg has brought “tomato allergy” to the level of “literary reference” in her Queen of Babble book series. In the books, main character Lizzie Nichols is allergic to tomatoes. An incident in the first book clearly draws the line in the tomato sauce when poor Lizzie has to try not to vomit when faced with an English breakfast consisting of all tomato dishes. This anti-tomato series is on the New York Times best seller list by the way.

Then there is John Debello the director and creator of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes movies. John has been known to say that he finds the inside squishy parts of tomatoes repulsive and when they start to rot they look like they have “evil faces.” Right on, John! The movie series revolves around a group of mutant tomatoes that attack and kill humans. There are four movies and an animated series. My favorite of these movies is Killer Tomatoes Eat France! I think it is because it involves two of my biggest fears….rebellious tomatoes, and dying in France (because I can’t say "take me to a hospital" in French) Anyway, Mr. Debello has shown the world the villainous tomatoes through the villainous art of cinema.

These two media greats have shown me that when tomatoes get you down you just turn it around on them. I can’t let tomatoes win! But a life without tomatoes means a life sans pizza. At many a pizza party friends have exclaimed “Poor Drama she can’t abide tomatoes!” Well I have three words for them, Pappa Johns Pizza. That’s right Alfredo Pizza delivered to your door. There is life after tomatoes.

~taste the rainbow~