When I was growing up, my family moved around a lot. When it came to school, it wasn’t unusual for me to finish the fall semester in one state and then start the spring semester at a totally different school in another state. By the time I was 12, I had attended schools in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana. Whenever I mention that to people, they always express some sympathy that I didn’t have more stability in my life when I was younger. While I appreciate the thought, it didn’t really bother me that much at the time. It all seemed perfectly normal.

There was one thing that always remained consistent. No matter what state I was in or what school I was attending, there was always at least one person in my class who (1) had a food allergy and (2) would freak out about it at the most inopportune times. “Does this have peanuts in it?” they would ask while looking down at the pepperoni pizza that had been ordered as a reward for the class. “I’ll die if there are peanuts in it.” And, of course, there were never any peanuts in it. But just hearing that someone could die if they ate a peanut, a banana, or a mango had a way of really ruining the mood. Often, it felt as if I was expected to feel guilty because I could actually eat food that they couldn’t.

The 2024 Lifetime film Yoga Teacher Killer: The Kaitlin Armstrong Story features a scene in which Kaitlin (Caity Lotz) is attending a yoga class. She tells everyone that she’s currently the business manager for the best “gravel rider” in the country, Colin Strickland (Kyle Schmid). No one in the class has heard of Colin, and it also appears that they don’t know that gravel riding is a type of competitive bicycle racing. Kaitlin reacts to this news by suddenly freaking out about finding a mango in a fruit cup. She claims to be allergic to them and then starts to breathe extremely rapidly while clutching at her throat. Someone asks if she has an EpiPen. Kaitlin shakes her head and then gasps that she needs some Benadryl. The interesting thing about this scene is that Kaitlin is obviously faking, and everyone in the class knows that she’s faking, but they’re also scared to point that out. So everyone has to sit there politely while Kaitlin pretends to be having a life-threatening allergic reaction.

As the scene shows, Kaitlin has an obsessive need to be the center of attention and, when she’s not, she’ll create drama to make sure that she is. When Colin briefly breaks up with her, Kaitlin makes up a story about being chased by an unknown man to win him back. Unfortunately, when Kaitlin learns that Colin briefly dates Moriah Wilson (Larissa Dias) during the time they were separated, Kaitlin loses it. Moriah is younger and more successful than Kaitlin, and Kaitlin’s obsession with her leads first to threatening phone calls before moving on to murder.

Yoga Teacher Killer is based on a real-life 2022 murder that occurred down here in Texas. The film plays up the fact that Kaitlin Armstrong was a yoga instructor even though yoga really didn’t have much to do with the actual crime. It’s pretty much a standard Lifetime true crime film, one that is distinguished by Caity Lotz’s memorably unhinged performance as Kaitlin Armstrong. The film ends with a title card informing us that Kaitlin now teaches yoga in prison. One can only assume that she’s being accommodated with a mango-free diet.