apparently i’m intolerant…or just mildly allergic?

we as a society like to throw a lot of medical terms around as if we have a level of education that we don’t…

…for example on tattoos and piercings.

most people that have issues with piercings don’t have issues with the ACTUAL piercing. it’s with the jewelry. a lot of people have taken to calling jewelry “piercings” (i.e., “where can i look at y’all’s belly piercings?”) but that’s an annoyance for a whole different bit i think i’ve actually done before. moving on…

…”a hole is a hole” is the general public’s attitude towards body piercings. never mind training, placement, experience, finesse, and jewelry quality. if we charge $55 for a basic nose piercings and our “competition” charges $15 on sundays guess where people go? more amusingly, on monday when their nose or lip or whatever is swollen like they’ve been in a bar fight guess where people go? NOT where they were charged less than i paid for our to-go mexican food last night – they’re closed on mondays (conveniently). no, then they come to us.

the other tendency the public tends to do is worst case scenario their piercing or tattoo issues. can’t just be an allergic reaction to shitty chinese jewelry from bargain basement pricing on piercings (how do you think they do it so cheap?). no, it’s “infected”. here’s the deal – unless a licensed medical professional (a website doesn’t count) didn’t physically look at you and then prescribe antibiotics you’d don’t KNOW if it’s an infection.

period.

likewise, when we have a negative reaction to something physically, be it something we touch, smell, or eat, we tend to call it an “allergy”…and those can be no joke. shane is allergic to onions. that doesn’t mean shane doesn’t LIKE onions, or gets a little bloated or puffy when he eats them. shane’s throat will shut his ass the fuck down and choke him out if he eats them. THAT’S a fucking allergy.

i don’t think i have an ALLERGY to shrimp – but i do believe i might have a (more than slight) intolerance issue. or a minor allergy. in a bit of hypocrisy or irony, depending on how you want to view it, i’ve only diagnosed myself via websites…but that’s also why i’m not sure of the label. my label for myself has always been “i’m just not much of a shrimp guy”. so, of course, the one time i try to BE a shrimp guy it didn’t go well. now, don’t get me wrong – i’ve eaten shrimp before and to my knowledge never had an adverse reaction. but on saturday morning, when we were at the coast, the ufc decided to yelp a place for us to get breakfast and we ended up at this awesome breakfast / lunch spot where i ate a shrimp omelette. it was delicious, and remember i’m not much of a shrimp guy. the only reason i’m not mentioning their name here is because of what happened with me, which i don’t think was on them – the ufc and i ordered the exact same thing for breakfast and the kiddo ordered something similar and only i had an issue. rest assured an excellent yelp review will be left for them…

…to keep the graphic descriptions to a minimum let’s just say i was cool most of the day until i wasn’t. and when i wasn’t, it appeared in the form of blood loss…and not from a cut. but it was substantial and unpleasant. and i feel comfortable saying it was a reaction to food because it was gone within twenty-four hours. it was just a very unpleasant twenty-four hours.

so that’s it – no more shrimp. if the problem comes back without it, we know it’s a deeper issue and i might actually have to go to a doctor for the third time in twenty years. if not, we know my body don’t like the skrimp and we call it good.