Saturday, April 13, 2013

"WHOLE GRAINS ARE GOOD FOR YOU!"

We walk to the little vegan Thai place around the corner. I don't want to get take out. I want a date. A date means no cell phones, no television show, no video games, no dog barking at every neighbor opening their door. I zip up my navy blue boots, comb my hair in the bathroom mirror and put on my pink scarf and winter coat. Scott turns off the computer and shuffles in his socks to the closet to grab his green sneakers.  

Five years ago, the saying, "If you can't beat em...join 'em", circled through my thoughts like an antique merry-go-round with chipping paint, a rusty motor and an 89-year-old attendant with dementia and smudged lipstick. 
If you can't beat 'em...join 'em. 
If you can't beat 'em...join 'em! 
IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM. JOIN THEM!"  
Faster and faster it whirled until one Christmas morning——after being a vegan for a year and a half——I decided to eat my mother's scrambled eggs. 

At a table with a slight wobble, while we sit and eat, he tells me——in regards to trading in my smart phone, quitting Facebook and being a vegan——to change the saying (which I tell him I detest) to, "If you can't beat 'em, coexist with 'em." 

I do! None of my friends are vegans. Most are not even vegetarians. No one in my family is vegan. And when we discuss food, I try very hard to not talk much about it. (Though, I admit, I've been known to occasionally lose my temper and scream, "WHOLE GRAINS ARE GOOD FOR YOU!") But I don't want to lose friends over this. And I don't want anyone to think I'm pressuring them into eating tofu, broccoli, or beans. No one wants to spend time with a protesting preacher type. Someone who points out all the flaws of the world, while calling everyone else naive for not noticing. Butthis is my place. So here is something. I hate——yes a very strong unpleasant word——but I hate how so many people think eating dead animals is justified because they eat only the fancy organically—fed dead animals. The ones killed (they imagine) by rugged men in Carharts who cradle their cows before carrying their carcasses in coolers to farmers markets.  

I just wish our first world country would progress past these uncivilized and barbaric practices. But I do coexist. I do. I understand that people are more than what they choose to eat. That some people just don't quite realize that pork means pig flesh and that jello is made from horse hooves. But I don't say this out loud! New friends and acquaintances usually don't even know that I'm a vegan for months after meeting me. Which doesn't mean that I don't care! Just that I prefer conflict-free conversations. Even when spending time with those I love most who praise their four-egg omelets, their heavy cream cappuccinos and their salmon salads, I smile and try not to suggest that they get their cholesterol checked. But I hate when they try to convince me that the meat they eat is OK because they pay some pretentious blood-thirsty butcher $8.95/pound to wrap it pretty paper. Or that their diet is warranted because "that is the way the world works, Rachel, and has worked since the days of the cavemen. Everybody else is holding number tickets at the deli and ordering chilled cadavers, but you. People eat meat. Deal with it. You're the freak. And you're making me mad. So shut up."  

——You might think this is about you. But it isn't. Really. And I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the words you sometimes say. At the reasons why you say them and at the history that has lead you to believe them.——    
     
We drink lemon water from our large glass goblets and talk about Science and God; the sauce that comes with the vegetable dumplings; our potential plan for the next couple years and the raspberry chocolate chip cookies I left cooling on paper towels in the kitchen. I tell Scott about the resistance I felt when I was a vegan for the first time. That I didn't want it anymore. That I decided I would rather ignore my own feelings than deal with the pestering hostility and the judgmental "how are you possibly getting enough protein" kind of questions. Scott says that my choosing the word, "resistance" means that I was pushing just as much as I was being pushed........... He's right. I pushed emails at my family, pleading messages with horrid pictures and videos of animal cruelty. I wanted them all to change with me, but they wouldn't. And, of course, I'm pushing now. Every word I write is a poke, a shove and maybe even a stomach punch. Well, I'm sorry if I've made you mad and uncomfortable. Most of the time, as you know, I coexist quite peacefully within this meaty American culture. It's just once in awhile that I get the compulsion to stand on my chair and scream, 

"WHOLE GRAINS ARE GOOD FOR YOU!"

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