Nail Polish And Mushrooms

Okay so. I don't like painting my nails very often.

I also don't like mushrooms.

Now, you may be wondering what these two things have in common, and the answer to that is one of my few childhood memories

It was the day before Mother's Day. To celebrate, (because my family was Christian and celebrated the day before and went to church the day of) my mom bought pizza and helped me paint my nails with some cheapy nail polish she found. This was when I was little and nail polish was a Big Deal™, so I was very excited.

But also very small.

And very very susceptible to sticking things that smelled like strawberries into my mouth.

Though, to defend younger me's eating of the special Mother's Day nail polish, I have always had a bad habit of chewing on my nails. So it's not like I only consumed it because it smelled good, I also didn't realize that biting your nails isn't the best idea when wearing nail polish until I had almost no nail polish left on my hands.

It was really cheap nail polish.

But back to the point, at my young age, I was not a fan of mushrooms. They had a weird texture and a weirder smell and I simply did not want them in my mouth.

My mom however, apparently overlooked this issue when she had ordered our pizza. 

Younger me couldn't just NOT have PIZZA. That would be a travesty. So instead I picked the mushrooms off.

Up until the very last one, when mom implored me to try 'just one mushroom, so you can see if you still don't like them.'

I did not. But it was of no consequence. I finished the mushroom and brushed my teeth and went up to bed. 

This is when things got bad.

After about twenty minutes of tossing and turning I realized that my eye was itchy, and that I was really thirsty. I went downstairs and got a cup of water, before heading in to where mom was to ask if my eye looked alright.

Needless to say, it did not. Mom gasped audibly and told me to put my shoes on. I didn't know what was happening, and let myself get hustled out to the car.

This was when I noticed that I was also feeling really warm. I came to the conclusion that I was sick, and that it was almost definitely the mushroom's fault.

I either fell asleep during the car ride, or merely hallucinated the entire way; but somehow we were at the hospital and I was being dragged around and poked and prodded a whole lot. The doctors were using a whole lot of words like "reaction" and "ingest". I just wanted to sleep. 

After about twenty minutes the doctors told my mom that my eye had swollen up (which is when I noticed that hey, things do look really weird) due to an allergic reaction to something I ate, and that I should be fine in the morning.

My parents apparently didn't believe them very much, as we didn't even go to church the next day so that I could stay home and rest. Around noon I was feeling fine, albeit a little warm and tired, so we went over to grandma's house and mom talked about my near fatal encounter with nail polish and mushrooms.

And that's why I don't like painting my nails.