in which i wonder about peanut butter

I wonder if I'm allowed to bring peanut butter into work. I work in a school, I'm a special ed parapro, I've only had this job for three weeks, things are weird for schools right now and I'm still getting used to the job, the building, the people, and the policies. I'm walking through the halls of the building and remember the importance of considering food the allergies of students, how much emphasis is placed on creating allergen free zones to avoid negligent harm. All of a sudden I feel like I'm carrying a bomb, but I keep walking to the kitchen peanut butter in hand. I'm hungry and I like to put peanut butter in my oatmeal, nobody told me whether or not I'm allowed to have it here so here I am with it, now slightly anxious at the thought of having to be told, as though it were common sense, that it is inappropriate and dangerous to bring peanut butter into a school building, especially given that I am a staff member.

In this moment I am not afraid that my action (the peanut butter) will bring harm to anyone.

This tension is not the result of a fear of dire consequence.

I think it's a result of how I interact with rules and society.

I think it's a feeling of not wanting to be told that I should have known better.

I wonder if that comes from anxiety, or some kind of internal pride, as though facing my own incorrectness would bring about a great discomfort.

I am not holding a bomb, I am holding a jar of peanut butter.

It makes me wonder how many things in my life I avoid or have avoided because of how I react to this feeling. To a fear of being wrong.

How many rooftops I never sat on,

how many people I decided to let know a false version of me,

how many times I sat silent, reinforcing the windshield of my internal world rather than allowing small pebbles of discomfort to crack it and change my perspective.

I wonder if my noticing of this feeling will change me at all.