LEEWIND: It's all fun and games until someone eats a salad
Courtesy of Preston Steger, Social Media Manager
LEEWIND is a weekly series by the Lee Clarion featuring a story from our archives to celebrate Lee's Centennial.
March 28, 2007—Everybody hates things that are different, and this especially applies to food. This is why a vegetarian is incredibly vulnerable to flying looks and angry rocks.
People ask me what it's like to be a vegetarian all the time. Actually, that's a complete lie. I'm not even a vegetarian. However I have seen people tell vegetarians their innermost secret desires for all kinds of meat, especially steak. I've seen men burst into song, get up on top of tables and dance with baby back ribs. Many people choose to go with the boring, "Oh, I couldn't live without steak."
The life of a vegetarian seems full of conflict, daring and adventure. First you have conflict, all of which happens without even talking. People everywhere are suspicious of your non-meat activities. It can only mean that you plan on removing their meats with your espionage group as they sleep.
Some vegetarians openly talk about how they wish your organs would be chewed viciously when the cows take their sweet revenge in the second coming. Is this what most vegetarians or cows are like? Not all the time. In fact, most vegetarians are nice and likable people.
Next you have daring, which comes in narrowly avoiding the attempts of the world to feed you meat. When you are a vegetarian for so long, your meat enzymes get sad and lonely and run away to the circus. The Meat Circus. So when you bite into a steak years after being a vegetarian, it will cause extreme pain. To non-vegetarians, this is like someone eating a pear that has crushed glass in it. Even this example might not stop the angry looks you will get when you ask if you can go someplace that doesn't offer just burgers and salads for dinner.
And that brings me to adventure and salads, which go together. Every salad, shoved into your face, is like playing minesweeper on extra hard. You poke your fork around the severed chicken heads, little bacon bits, and hidden slices of ham hoping to save your insides.
Why do people make life so hard for vegetarians? Not wanting to murder stuff is the foundation of society. Not wanting to get blood sprayed all over you is a typical bonus people like when being in a civilization. There is another bonus that is further down the list that people really like, too, which is not having people tell you what to do.
If this article does one thing, let it give a few people the idea vegetarians aren't going to say anything about your meat-eating habits. you can slap those steaks all over your face, build a little boat of of them or make your whole bed out of them and many vegetarians won't bother you. Just let them eat their food, don't bug them and they will not be forced to mention health statistics.
In conclusion, being a vegetarian is much like being anything else. Except when vegetarians are stuck on a deserted island together with you they'll imagine you as a carrot instead of a hot dog or a sizzling steak.
