We Are All Carnivores

Last summer, at the urging of one of her camp counselors, YG became a vegetarian. From a purely personal point of view this has been a pain in the ass, because it has meant increasing fractionalization of mealtime. At school the lunchroom often forgot to provide her a vegetarian meal (meaning that she could eat cereal from the breakfast setups, or wait until after school, when she was ravenous and cranky. Still the kid, who never really seemed meat-driven, meal-wise, seemed to fare okay; she would occasionally tot up the number of animals she had saved by not eating them, and seemed to feel good about it. Then, recently, she told us she would stop being a vegetarian at Thanksgiving, because it would simply feel too cruel (to herself; I'm sure the turkey would have a different opinion) to have to give up Thanksgiving turkey. And she made another calculation about the number of animals she might save between now and then.

Finally, yesterday, she muttered woefully, "I wish I could eat meat."

"Why can't you?"

"Because I want you to know that I honor my commitment, and I want you to think I'm responsible, and I said I'd be a vegetarian until Thanksgiving."

So her dad and I talked to her for a while about how proud we were at her commitment thus far, and how impressed that she'd held on since July, and told her we were proud of her regardless of what she ate, and that it was really up to her.

"So what would you like for lunch?"

Small voice: "Could I have a hotdog? Could I have two hotdogs?"

"Yup. No problem."

And the look of bliss when she took that first bite was rapturous. She may decide to embrace vegetarianism again, and I'll be supportive again (tho' I hope she's enough older by that time to cook her own meals if she's not going to eat what everyone else is eating). I the meantime we're going to spend more of our animal-protein-dollar on foods that are raised as humanely as possible. I have no problem being at the top of the food chain, but there's no need to be a brute about it.