feeling silly...

Today I'm feeling silly. Partly due to the cappuccino I just drank. Caffeine goes straight to my brain. So for today here are a few silly thoughts and stories on vegetarianism and my family:

For those of you who don't know. I'm a vegetarian or at least partly so. I used to be 100% vegetarian, but never vegan. Now I'm a pesco-vegetarian (I eat fish, yum). Which makes me recall a favorite tune...

Fish heads, fish heads,
roly poly fish heads.
Fish heads, fish heads
eat 'em up, yum!

Ok, so that was just a silly aside. Honestly though, being vegetarian was never easy in my family. When we go out as a family for a nice meal, they all order fat, juicy steaks and I order pasta. My parents & sisters are carnivores even though my younger sister did go vegetarian--twice. The first time she was just 12. It was the same year I became vegetarian myself. I'd like to think her decision was influenced by me (maybe partly so), but she had moral reasons. Vegetarinaism for me was straightforward and easy, I had just never really liked meat. But the morning my sister declared herself vegetarian she was vocal in letting us know it was because killing animals was wrong. That night at dinner, however, my mom (who by the way, is no dummy) served my sister's favorite meal--steak. Well, Liz reflected a bit but in the end decided it was a meal she just couldn't pass up. I'm sure that my mom was relieved after already dealing with enough anguish that year finding enough to feed me, her other vegetarian daughter. Now we still laugh about her short-lived day of vegetarian, animal-activism.

The second time she tried her lot at vegetarianism, she was in her final year of high school and decided to go hard-core: vegan from the get-go. My poor mother had no clue what on earth to cook for a child who wouldn't even eat cheese! And when she headed off to Berkely for college, she stuck with it. My parents still hating it all the way. Eating out at fine restaurants is a favorite pasttime of theirs, yet how could they enjoy a good meal with a daughter who drilled the waiter about the ingredients of each dish on the menu?

Now that she's a meat-eater once more, my parents are elated. Nevertheless, they've still got me to contend with. On the other hand, I have improved in their eyes; now that I eat fish, dining in my company is much more enjoyable. So my mother says. Notwithstanding, my father still manages to make some unwelcome remark each time I'm home. It usually goes something like this. We're all eating at the dinner table and my dad turns to me with a earnest look, "Now, Aimee, you're sure you don't want to try just a little piece of meat?"

In such a predicament, I usually can't help but revert straight to adolecence with a whining, "Noooooo, dad!" However, this time I'm home, I've come up with a witty (and I hope funny response) that perhaps even my father will get a kick out of...

"Dad, I don't eat meat because I recognize meat for what it is: the stereroid-enhanced and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal."

P.S. If you're wondering.... here is where I came across this great reply.