the blog quebecois

The Globe and Mail:

Even since an Ontario mother launched a campaign to have the oak trees near her kids’ school cut down, arguing that falling acorns endanger children with severe allergies, mommy bloggers have been calling her nuts.

“Apparently, making schools nut-free facilities isn’t enough!” exlaimed cafemom.com. “We now have to fear school-aged children munching on yard debris.”

Donna Giustizia, appearing before the city of Vaughan, insisted that acorns dispersing from oaks on city-owned property next to St. Stephen Catholic Elementary School gave students at the nut-free facility “a false sense of security,” the Star reports.

The mere sight of acorns could trigger anxiety in an allergic child, she said, while the nuts themselves could be used by other students “to bully and torment children.”

But a child would have to be forced to eat the bitter nuts to have an allergic reaction, allergists say.

I think that severe mental retardation, rather than nut allegies, is in play here.

According to Dr. Spock, properly-mothered children usually abandon acorn-eating by the age of 10 (I was quite precocious in this regard, having quit by the time I was eight-years-old. And all it took were a few vigorous whacks on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper!)