It finally happened. The day I've been dreading, the day my son Lennon developed consciousness about his food allergies. I don't mean the first time he realized he had them; he's known that since he was old enough to talk and had to learn by rote what he's not allowed to eat. I mean consciousness as in, "This makes me different from other kids."

It went down something like this: A friend was eating a Clif bar, and my son Lennon wanted a bite. When I told him he couldn't eat something with peanuts and dairy, he asked, "But WHY can't I eat that?" When I reminded him of his food allergies, his face contorted into tears. "Well, I wish I didn't!" he said, and stormed off in a huff.

For most city kids, there's only one link in the food chain, and its name is Safeway or Stop & Shop. They know money doesn't grow on trees, but have no idea that food, in fact, does. A bag of pre-sliced apple wedges may be as close as most urban kids ever get to an orchard.

The natural world is just as alien to suburban children, whose native habitat has dwindled over the decades from backyards and ball fields to the narrow digital confines of MySpace. Child advocacy expert Richard Louv calls this modern malady "nature-deficit disorder." In Last Child in The Woods, Louv quotes a fourth grader who says "I like to play indoors better ‘cause that's where all the electrical outlets are."

So we stuffed ourselves silly last Thursday, and on Friday we burned off some calories running to the cash registers. Some people even left tread marks on the backs of their fellow shoppers in the stampede to snag a super-cheap laptop at WalMart. Yikes.