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their money down. “Gotta run and change.” One girl had to go meet her mother, who was chaperoning. The three altos sharing a room headed out. Then the other sopranos followed them. I was the last one at the table.
    Our waiter swooped down on the pile of cash. He eyed me, counting out each bill.
    â€œWhere’s my tip?”
    â€œUm …” I froze. “I don’t think they wanted to give you one.”
    With a loud clatter he swept ten dirty plates into a plastic dish tub. Then he picked up the tub and stormed through the double-hinged doors, cursing in an unidentifiable language. From the kitchen I heard the crash of the tub being thrown to the floor. Only then did I do what I should have done ten minutes before: I ran.
    I had always been a careful, obedient child, figuring that my allergies didn’t give me much of a choice. In high school, I was ready to rebel. Teenage rebellion usually involves a sip of beer or a surreptitious make-out session during
Days of Thunder
. My coup took the form of a spoonful of peas.
    I was sitting on the far left end of the L-shaped sectional that anchored our downstairs. For years my regular seat had been the prime real estate on the far right end of the couch. Bigger end table. Close to the window. But my kid sister’s macaroni-and-cheese habit had contaminated that section of furniture; the ghosts of countless fumbled pasta bears past haunted the armrest, residual dairy causing my eyes to water whenever I sat there. I had been forced to relocate.
    â€œI’ve spent years facing the TV from a different angle,” I whined to my mom. “Now my neck feels strained.”
    Dinner that night was one of the usual combinations of baked chicken breast, wild rice, and boiled peas. No sauces, no garnishes, Sandra-friendly. As I lifted the obligatory vegetable to my mouth, it occurred to me that I didn’t particularly like peas.
    In fact, I hated peas.
    I could hate peas!
    It was the first time I could remember articulating a dislike of something I’d eaten. I’d grown up thinking of food in terms of two categories—deadly and safe. I had a few favorites, sure (bacon, French fries, artichokes in chicken broth). But outright “dislikes” were a luxury only others could afford.
    On the secure shores of my family’s tan shag carpet, I decided I deserved to have dislikes like anyone else. The moratorium on peas would last seven years. Later in life, I’d take to turning down okra,
uni
, Israeli couscous, and red onions. I admit that cavalierly saying no to something on a menu still thrills me a little.
    If only all my problems could have been solved by swapping peas for lima beans. In the course of three years, I had gone from being a cute, eager-to-please kid to being a moody lump of greasy hair and sweaty armpits. I rolled my jean shorts up so high that the pocket linings showed. I chewed gum just so I could snap it in sullen comment.
    Fifteen was the year we discontinued my allergy shots, after a new round of testing revealed they’d had little impact on my sensitivities. Just what every teenager craves: incontrovertible evidence that she’s been duped by The Man.
    â€œFourteen goddamn years of goddamn injections and they didn’t do a goddamn thing,” I reported to my friends. Actually,the shots probably kept my environmental allergies from worsening, but such subtleties were lost on me. I had just discovered cynicism, which required modifying sentences with “goddamn” whenever possible.
    I turned rude toward any and all doctors. I “forgot” to use my daily inhalers. When chided, I muttered, “It’s my body.”
    My mother would pick me up for dentist appointments and ask if I’d brushed my teeth. The answer was always a principled “No.” I figured that if the dentist really needed to know what my teeth looked like, he should see them in their natural state. No playing