Handbag Bread – The Weird Side of the Internet

Handbag Bread – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

It’s tough having a medical condition or a disability. It’s actually double-tough, because a.) you have a condition that sucks ass, and 2.) most other people don’t, so the world’s really theirs. For example: say there’s a club on the third floor of an old apartment building. Let’s say it’s kind of an underground club, with only a dubious relationship with building codes. Your friends want to go, and they’re going. But you gotta stay home and polish your wheelchair. See what I’m getting at?

We’ve come a long way in making accommodations for people with different conditions, but I’m highly doubting that the three-day-old meatball sandwich at the EZ-Mart is gluten free unless they were too cheap to put gluten in it in the first place. Just making a point, I know the gluten isn’t an additive; I’m not a heathen. So if you actually have celiac disease or something that forces you away from the bread of the masses, what do you do?

Get yourself some “handbag bread.”

22 year-old UK student Evelyn Burton has celiac disease. She gets dangerous allergic reactions to gluten, which, as I said, is the bread of the masses. So she grabs some Marks & Spencer gluten-free bread, wraps it in cellie and stuffs it in her handbag.

Going out to the clubs, the bouncers, when asking to look in her bag, don’t know what to make of it. But she does; she’s a burger at McDonald’s when the squad goes there after a hearty night of dancing. A double cheeseburger, hold the bread, extra pickles, and she goes A-Team on it. I mean why the hell can’t she have some Mickey Dee’s when her friends are?

Not everybody with a condition or disability can just make do or improvise, but most do in some way. Wheelchairs are tough, because you can’t improvise a twenty-step staircase and most cars don’t have roof racks for wheelchairs and if they did it would be a hell of a feet for a person in one to get it up there a solo. But in other cases, necessity is the mother of invention.

More from Liam Sweeny.