Death by Snail

Here's something you don't hear about me every day...I'm allergic to snails.

Now before you may ask me how I might have found out about this unusual allergy, it took me a few years to put the combination of clues together -- everytime I would go to a nice restaurant with my family I used to love ordering esgargot. MMMMM! Wonderful buttery, garlicy goodness!

Later that night I think my throat would constrict and I'd suffer an asthmatic type attack where I would wake up in the middle of the night and have a super hard time breathing. Since making that connection, I stopped ordering esgargot and I haven't had one of these episodes since.

UNTIL...... today my business networking group, BNI Hawaii, met today at the Bistro near Waikiki for a lunch meeting. They served esgargots to use as a complementary appetizer. OH I knew I should have resisted but it's been YEARS since I've last had one. What are the chances I'm still affected by something so small. "One little delicious snail won't hurt...."

10 minutes later, "Hmm..nobody is eating that last tiny one over there.... how bad can 2 snails be?"

Now I don't know if it's just my imagination but I'm certainly feeling a bit strange. I'm breathing just fine but I feel like my body temperature is elevated. OH it would suck to die like this. Imagine the coroner's report, "Subject died because of snails"

I guess it's not the end of the world to be allergic to something as obscure as snails. It could be worse I could be allergic to ......air, or something like that. There are enough substitutes out that are similar. Eating a snail is just about the same as eating a piece of portabello mushroom. MMMMM. Hey, maybe I should create a snail burger. Any takers?

Besides this episode, the BNI group I'm in is finally kicking off. We reached our required membership amount to kick off our very own chapter and now we're going through training. They teach you how to run a BNI meeting, but more importantly, they've been been teaching all of us how we must present our businesses to each other so that we make effective use of time and words.

Imagine walking next to a stranger on the street and they asked you, "Oh so what do you do?" The idea is to be able to quickly and effectively tell this person about your business within 60 seconds. This is a basic fundamental skill that every business person should have. I'm thankful that there's a group like this to help me develop these things.

Our group seems fun too. There's a few folks in there with a good sense of humor so we're getting along just fine.

Well, back to work..... hope I survive the night.