The Milkshake Incident (AKA: Why We Needed Hazmat Suits on Vacation)

My young adult son has food allergies too—he just prefers to pretend he doesn’t. Being young, flexible, and blessed with the digestive resilience of a Labrador retriever, he can usually “fudge it” without too much immediate consequence.

According to him, eating wheat just makes his body “get hot.”
Hot. That’s it. No big deal. Totally fine.

Meanwhile I’m over here giving a TED Talk on inflammation, gut lining damage, and long-term system chaos, and he’s nodding politely like I’m explaining cloud formations.

But he’s an adult. He gets to make his own choices.
Until those choices affect the rest of us.

On our recent family vacation, he decided—entirely unprompted—to have a milkshake for lunch. Just… casually. In the middle of the day. As though dairy and his body are on speaking terms.

We paid the price.
The rest of the trip was spent rolling the car windows down every ten minutes so we wouldn’t perish from the fumes. Every time he let one rip, he’d just laugh and say, “Sorry!” like he’d bumped my elbow instead of launching a biological event.

I’d love to say lesson learned.
But let’s be honest… I fully expect to see him with another milkshake someday, shrugging as his internal organs stage another protest.