1. Fruits that my mother has planted
Since I was a small child, I have loved fruits. I used to eat fruits like tomatoes, melons, and persimmons that my mother had grown herself when I was in elementary school and lived in the country. At that time, I ate tomatoes with a lot of sugar in the summer, but thinking about it now, it’s amazing how I ate them. Also I used to eat green melons, though it wasn’t as sweet as the yellow melon. It was still quite tasty to eat in light of my mother’s genuineness. My parents had a field, and at the head of the field stood a lovely persimmon tree. Every fall, I would pick and eat sweet persimmons from that tree. In those days, the only bananas were fruits that I couldn’t eat easily which make me sneezing as allergy now when they are aound me.
2. Change of fruits that I used to eat
1) After moving to Gwangju in 1992
My family eventually moved to Gwangju in 1992. My mother provided the family with seasonal fruits as snacks at that time. Melons, sweet persimmons, and tomatoes were grown and consumed by hand in the countryside, but they were bought and consumed in Gwangju. Additionally, I got conditions to eat grapes more frequently every summer than before. We used to eat seasonal fruits like apples and mandarins during the winter, and we would sometimes add pears on special occasions.
2) Until I can freely enjoy fruits
Nevertheless, I was unable to consume the fruits my parents had given me once I moved out of my home to attend a university in a large city. Of course, I couldn’t properly eat fruit even after my time in the military. Furthermore, I was not able to eat fruit frequently, even during my time in graduate school. I could purchase and consume the fruit of my choice only after I started working in an office.
Specifically, to relieve boredom, I would buy fruits like apples, bananas, pears, melons, pineapples, kiwis, persimmons, etc., keep them in the refrigerator and eat them. Apples are the fruits that I ate first thing in the morning in order to maintain good health. I’ve been having apples as breakfast for the past four years or so. I ate less fruit for a while after getting married in 2018 because my wife prepared Rice and Kimchi as breakfast for me early in the morning.
3) In a marriage, no sneezing as bananas allergy
We used to buy fruits every time we went shopping following marriage, they rarely strayed from the fruits I purchased before getting married. I usually picked apples up when I went grocery shopping. Additionally, my wife occasionally substitutes bananas and milk for breakfast, so bananas are now common fruits in the house.
We went to the local supermarket as usual to buy groceries. There were plenty of fruits in the supermarket, each with a distinct flavor and aroma, encouraging customers to choose their own. One day, we bought bananas and apples, staples in our kitchen, along with a variety of other ingredients. We left the supermarket after glancing around to see if there were any more ingredients we needed to buy.
We shared a 1.5-room apartment when we first got married, but it was too small to fit everything in the refrigerator. Among these, we set fruits out on the balcony to eat whenever we pleased. We typically placed onions, rice, apples, bananas, and other fruits on it along with laundry. Additionally, the door between the living room and the balcony was typically open.
4) Allergy, sneezing by bananas
But for some reason, I started sneezing a lot all of a sudden. I was unaware of the nature of the issue. The only thing new that I could find when I looked around the balcony was fruit. I eat that fruit frequently, but there was no cause for concern. However, the sneezes came one after the other, and I started to feel stressed out. I really thought it wouldn’t work, so I thought carefully about what the problem was.
I thought it might be because of the spicy scent of the onions, so I put them in a plastic bag and stored them, but I was still sneezing. After thinking about it again, I thought it was because of laundry, so I closed the balcony door. But I was still sneezing. I looked at bananas at that precise moment. That time, I made the decision to store the bananas in a plastic bag. My sneezing stopped, as if it had never happened. It was time to make sure of the source of the sneeze. After that, I always kept the bananas I bought in plastic storage containers. And since I moved into an apartment, I keep a variety of fruits in a big refrigerator that I pull out when I’m ready to eat them.
3. Allergy test as sneezing before eating bananas
I once read a book that claimed that people who are allergic to latex are also allergic to bananas, and I later discovered that this was true. Strangely enough, the book seemed to explain that allergies can arise from eating bananas. But I found myself sneezing because of an unidentified chemical that the bananas had released into the air. Whatever the situation, it is evident that one should always check for an allergy such as sneezing before eating the fruits such as bananas.