I’ve seen my mother on the brink of death. It was my first and only visit to El Salvador. I was nine years old.

We’d gone out to dinner at a restaurant that specialized in fruits from the sea. My mother ate a stew of mariscos. Seafood medley in a bowl, essentially. She’d been told she was allergic to shellfish in the past, but one little rash and slightly laboured breathing wasn’t enough to stop her. Shrimp is just that good.

My last memories of that night involve myself and my two younger brothers, then five and three, dumped at the home of the next-door neighbours, watching as my parents hopped into a cab with my mother clutching at her throat, gasping, “No puedo respirar,” turning pale. My brothers were crying. I was the dutiful big sister, singing REM songs and reassuring them that everything was going to be alright.

I didn’t actually think everything was going to be alright.

For some reason, I think of this event as epitomizing the difference between white people and the rest of the world. At least, when it comes to food.

I suppose I should preface the rest of what I’m about to say by announcing that I am pretty much white. Phenotypically, yes, but also culturally. While I was raised on rice, black beans, tortillas, yet-to-be-hip avocados and ripe plantains, I grew up preferring blander offerings. Birthdays were reserved for mock chicken legs and mac ‘n’ cheese. And the same continues, in sheep’s clothing:

Yoga. Organic produce. Wheat substitutes. White rice, rarely.

Which tangentially makes me wonder: are food sensitivities a gringo thing?

My mother has denounced many Western occurrences as “gringo things.” My favourite of these designations is women calling out in pain during childbirth, which my mother (blessed to have had quick labours with tiny babies, my five-pound self included) insists is reserved for the gringo variety of humankind. While I enjoy calling her out on these, and which she usually accepts with good humour, my mother’s led me to question whether some experiences really are just inventions of the warped gringo mind. The most significant of these being the omnipresent avoidance of gluten.

From a cross-cultural standpoint, abstaining of wheat things is probably the most mind-boggling dietary decision one can possibly make. Vegetarianism is weird enough (and having witnessed one of my brothers venture in that direction for a few years, I can verify that Salvadoran family members found it pretty incomprehensible), but not eating bread? Seriously? No one is too good to eat bread.

Food insensitivities are sufficiently difficult to explain to people removed from certain generations (e.g., X and Y), but the lingo barrier is only compounded when you factor in immigrant sensibilities and non-Western viewpoints. What is a food sensitivity, anyway? It’s not an allergy; it won’t kill you. So, is it a reaction that makes you feel less than neutral? Well, shit. No more tres leches cake for me.

I know that celiac is a real thing, and something that gets under-diagnosed in modern medicine. But I also know that everyone I’ve ever met who has been diagnosed with this thing has been white and (at least) middle-class, with the same cultural predilections as myself. Does this mean that the disorder has an eye out for former humanities students with natural toothpaste? Or is there some kind of trend happening under my nose, here?

I don’t mean to offend. I know wheat makes some of you feel shitty, and I’m not aiming to downplay your bloatage. But, I do wonder whether bloat awareness is a thing of gringodom. All of us gals grow up to become our mothers, and Conchy’s voice is calling bullshit in my head. It also doesn’t help that I’ve had girlfriends make light of their brief flirtations with wheat “allergies,” which we agreed via Facebook was a coming-of-age requirement for white liberal arts grads.

But in all truth, I’m not making fun. My pantry’s stocked with jars full of quinoa and oats that I’ve ground up for flour. I’m drinking the same Kool-Aid as the rest of y’all. Except I’m just a poseur, because wheat makes me feel fine.

This post is a part of Ethnic Aisle, the coolest multicultural blog party in Toronto!

For the past two years, I’ve babysat every week for an awesome little guy with two moms. He was 4 months old when I started; now he’s, well, two years older. He is the best behaved kid ever and a testament to why queer parents should get the support and respect they deserve.

When I arrived for yesterday’s babysitting sesh, he wished me “Happy Priiiiiide!” and handed me some Mardi Gras beads and a glowstick. So, here’s me passing on the message.

Happy Priiiiiiide!

I am strong. My insides are strong because I’ve spent a lot of my life talking myself out of self-destruction, which turns your soul into a callous. My body is strong, too. Partly this is because I take care of myself, but it’s mostly because I have high levels of testosterone. If you need proof on this matter, I’ll show you my moustache and what happens to my arms after three push ups. I’ll make a believer out of you.

Which is why I can’t figure out why I want babies.

I want babies something fierce. The moment I hit my mid-20s, I woke up and decided I needed some babies. It was that instantaneous: one day I was using phrases like “little life ruiners,” and the next I was moving back to the Annex.

When you’re a self-centered young woman with feminist ideals, wanting babies is a terrible burden to bear. You find yourself unable to reconcile the devil-may-care self image you created over Slits records and cigarettes with the nagging reality that you are now a reader of Mormon hipster mommy blogs. You find yourself researching doula training courses even though you are impatient and cold, because you want to bring yourself closer to the miracle of life. You start thinking of life as miraculous.

Around this time, people you are actually friends with begin getting knocked up. Except, they introduce this information with a beam and “We’re pregnant!” and it doesn’t matter whether or not it happened on purpose. Instead of judging them, or pitying them, or calculating provincial abortion costs, you squeal and hug them and tell them you’re so excited, because you are. You want to change diapers and go on trips to the zoo. Nevermind that, for the last twenty or so years, you have hated the zoo.

You put yourself on a strict five-year personal achievement plan so that you can start popping ‘em out while you’re still young enough to get rid of them at a reasonable age. You have high hopes of emptying your nest by your mid-fifties, and it’s something you can almost get away with saying because you are still young and obviously a moron. Deep down, though, you realize there are things you can’t control.

Above everything, you trust you will be a good parent. Not just because you come from a ridiculously sized family with 20 cousins your junior to chase around, but because you have babysat for every crazy family in the city of Toronto and, through your fieldwork, have amassed a comprehensive list of things not to do. You have also come to appreciate your parents, because they were A-ok. They will probably let you dump your children off on them for long stretches at a time, too.

I have the names of my children picked out. I’m not going to share them because I’m one of those jerkoffs who doesn’t want to risk getting my genius choices stolen, but I promise they’ll be worth the wait. My dad, who also has high testosterone, named me in high school. Years later, my Salvadoran mother was so touched by this kind of girly act that she allowed the name to stand. So it runs in the family.

I’m hungry for some babies, but not enough to make them happen for awhile. Trust. I have a pile of goals I’d like to cross off before I’m willing to put aside my self-absorption, and I enjoy the luxury of behaving irresponsibly. I’m also a huge slob; a child would surely perish in my household. But I will happily play cool aunt or babysitter to your children, and I will do a good job of it. And I will peekaboo the shit out of any fine afternoon.

Nothing milks the pathos like telling people you’ve never been dumped. This information provokes a whole spectrum of Strong Feelings, from the relatively benign “lucky bitch” to the more pointed “fucking sociopath” (that one from a former university TA on my 24th birthday, when excess beers turned both our nights into one big, sloppy confessional booth).

When my friend recently wrote about the pains of being dumped, I made it my mission to counter her argument with my own: that, if you have any self-respect, being the dumper can be infinitely worse. I speak as an expert. An expert in dumping.

I haven’t been in a whole lot of relationships in my life, but enough to know how they work. And here’s the thing: when a relationship comes to an end, it generally means it wasn’t working. There may have been deceit. There may have been denial. I could speculate all day, but the point is, needs weren’t being met. For BOTH PARTIES (and, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll pretend that all relationships involve only two people).

I know some people who have been dumped in cruel, unforgivable ways. I know someone who got married, paid off their spouse’s credit card debt instead of their own student loans, and dutifully served as the household breadwinner before being swapped after 9 months for the town exterminator. In that case, I side with the dumped–even though one might argue that this person had their own poor judgment to blame for the situation–because, in that particular instance, the dumped had been completely disrespected, used, and discarded. It was about more than romantic rejection.

When referring to garden-variety, low-stakes young adult relationships (the ones that don’t involve life savings and/or offspring, say), being dumped doesn’t automatically equate being wronged. It’s a preventative measure, keeping situations like the one I just described from ruining people’s lives. Some might argue that it’s even (!) a mutually beneficial act. But it’s painful. And only the dumped gets the right to complain about it.

People love to ruminate over heartbreak. Ask someone about their favourite album or book, and you’ll inevitably be treated to some gorgeously turgid tale of lovers lost. Being dumped gives a person license to act like an art school teenager, no questions asked, for weeks and even months at a time. Years later, experiences gathered during these post-dump periods are recalled with a certain dramatic gravitas. It seems that, for some people, being dumped is almost a gift–an opportunity to superimpose oneself into a Smiths song or any episode of The OC. Being dumped makes stuff feel really significant.

Dumpers aren’t allowed to wallow, and if a dumper’s had some kind of life-changing revelation after dumping someone, they know to keep it to themselves. This is sucky, because dumping someone you genuinely care about is the absolute worst. After I broke up with my high school boyfriend, with whom I feebly attempted to maintain a long-distance relationship for a few months into university, I couldn’t sleep for a week. I wrote him letters at 4am and ripped them apart. I collapsed into shriek-sobs when I ran into him the following summer at a hometown ice cream shop. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I did it because I knew I had to, because we were too young and too different. Because I owed it to myself, and to him.

And, here’s where the self-respect I mentioned earlier comes in: a person who cares about their personal integrity isn’t dumping someone they hate. They’re cutting things off before an ill fit leads to resentment. They’re signing themselves off to be villainized in the sake of their own mental health, and ideally, that of their partner as well. They’re knowingly positioning themselves as the Bad Guy, because it’s what needs to be done. It’s a huge, unwieldy, unsympathetic burden. There’s guilt. There’s hurt. Worst of all, there’s accountability.

Wouldn’t you rather be dumped, too?

I’m going to get into a lot of trouble for this post, mostly because it concerns almost everyone in the whole world including, yes, even my own awful self. But, it must be said: we need to put down our damn smartphones. I know, I know. This discussion is SO TIRED. But is it, really?

A couple of months ago, I met up with a semi-large group of people for a night of dancing. I’d been listening to my pre-gaming mix of La Bouche and 2 Live Crew while I sculpted my Night on the Town hair tower, so by the time I made it to the bar (late, of course) I was chomping at the bit for some shameless bump and grind. Lo and behold, all my friends were already there once I arrived. But, curiously, no one was dancing. No one was even standing up. No, every single one of my friends was parked silently with an iPhone, Tweeting or texting or whatevering away. This, on a Saturday night!

My first thought was, “Snap, I need an iPhone!” My current Android is on a budget network and doesn’t work half of the time, so unless I’m meeting friends next to a window on a busy street within 2-4 hours of my phone being charged, group Tweetathons aren’t usually an option for me. It wasn’t until weeks later that I considered how maybe my reaction had been a little, shall we say, effed.

A little perspective, courtesy of my social sphere: While roughly half of my friends are tech-rabid media types, the other half are either starving, overworked grad students, underpaid not-for-profit folks, or (let’s not beat around the bush here) straight-up hippies. I have several friends who don’t even own cell phones, much less fancypants mobile browsing devices. Whenever one from this group contemplates caving to the pressures of our mobile phone society, the others protest, “Nooooo! Don’t leave usssss!” which has so far proven successful in keeping me with a reliably cell-free pal contingency. I don’t even consider whipping out my phone when in the company of these (mostly) ladies because it would be supremely gauche. And, really, why is it so different for the rest of us?

I spend, not even kidding, a solid 10-12 hours, DAILY, in front of a screen. When you tack on the 8-9 hours of sleep I aim for each night (don’t judge), that’s as little as—you read right—a whopping THREE waking hours spent not staring into a screen. I don’t know about you, but those numbers kind of make me throw up in my mouth. So, I pose this question: what about mobile screen time is so damn appealing?

Alright, alright, as someone who still kind of (okay, REALLY) wants an iPhone, I actually already know the answer to this question: the internet is fun. Twitter is fun. Facebook is fun. Talking to other people about what you/they are up to is fun, and I spend a lot (too much) of my day doing just that. But, here is my very real concern: have we forgotten how to just be, IRL?

A couple of really good friends had me over for a dinner party a couple of months back, when my phone was relatively new and was having one of its rare moments of working. As the wine flowed, I became increasingly engrossed in my Twitter stream. How amazing it was to update how awesome my evening was panning out for all of the 13 people who pay attention to what I have to say! I think I may have even made a hashtag for horseradish meatballs, which were totes on the menu. Then, my very nice and diplomatic boyfriend pulled me aside and gently suggested that I stop being the rudest, most embarrasing person ever (but very nicely and diplomatically) and maybe, just maybe, keep my smartphone off the dinner table, and I realized I’d become one of THOSE PEOPLE.

Nobody thinks they are one of THOSE PEOPLE, but you probably are. Everyone is. A friend of mine once even wrote cheekily about “iPhone time” as if it were a Thing, because—guess what!—it is. And it’s so weird. Maybe it’s time for us to all to do a tech cleanse. We can practice looking into each other’s eyes, forming and spitting out voice words, and maybe—brace yourselves—even pausing to listen to other people’s voice words, too. We will take turns exchanging in real time. At the dance parties, we will even dance.