I have friends and family that are
vegetarians. I understand the philosophy
of an animal giving up its life to feed us and cloth us. I have even tried to change my eating habits
a few times. However, it only lasted a
week until I graduated to poultry, then seafood, and slowly, by the four-week
duration, progressed back to red meats.
It was Presidents’ Day 2000, I made a
roast for dinner. As I was carving it,
Evan pranced into the kitchen and asked, “What cha’ doin’, Mommie?”
“I’m carving a roast.”
“O! Okay.” He paused and asked, “What’s a roast? Is it meat?’
“Yes, Evan, it is meat.”
“What kind of meat is it?”
“Well, it’s cow meat.”
Silence was so thick you could have cut
that with a knife. Sometimes you could
actually see Evan’s mind working; you could hear the wheels turning, just like
my dad. He was quiet and surveyed the world
around him. His face became perplexed,
then enlightened. All of a sudden, his
voice started out calm and slowly rose in certainty, “You mean you eat meat?”
“Yes, I eat meat.”
“And meat is cow and meat is chicken?”
“Yes.”
“And cow and chicken are animals?”
“Yes.”
“And you EAT ANIMALS!?!”
“Yes, Evan, I guess that’s one way of
putting it; I eat animals.”
His nose crinkled up, and he put his
little hands together in front of his chest, and in no uncertain terms
declared, “Mommie, that’s dis-dis-disgusting!”
I looked at him and he looked at me and then he said, “Mommie, did I
hurt your feelings?”
Then I washed my hands so I could bend
down to sit on the floor next to him and talk.
“No, honey, you didn’t hurt my feelings.” We hugged.
I told him, “A lot of people feel like you do. Well, Aunt Ruthye for one. You can talk to her about it when we see her
in May if you want to.”
“Okay, I will.” Silence.
“So you eat the meat and what about the skin. What do they do with the cow’s skin?”
“They make it into shoes and clothes,
and people wear it as clothing. Some
people won’t wear things made of animal skin.”
“Mommie, where does cheese come
from?”
“Milk.
And, Evan, no animals are killed to make a glass of milk or a piece of
cheese. Just for reference, they’re
called byproducts.”
He had the biggest sigh of relief and
said, “Good! I’ll take a glass of milk
with cheese on the side, please…Hey, Emma, you want some…”
This all comes from a boy whose limited
menu (previous to this incident) included:
1.
Only whole milk
2.
Selective juices
3.
Soda pop
4.
Medium or mild cheddar cheese
5.
Bananas
6.
Certain crackers
7.
Bread
8.
Mashed potatoes
9.
Bobbies (twin talk for Nutra Grain granola bars)
10.
Pancakes
11.
French toast
12.
Peanut butter & grape jelly sandwiches
13.
Cheerios
14.
Chocolate
15.
Ice cream
So, the very next day, Evan, Emma and I
were on our way to the grocery store. I
looked in my rear-view mirror, and Evan had that look of “deep-thought” upon
his face. At which point, I thought,
this one is gonna’ be a doozy.
Emma asked, “Would you put number three
on, please?” (In layman’s terms that
means the classical music station. Emma
liked classical; Evan liked rock-n-roll; Edie liked country. Quite the diversification.)
At any rate, Evan
said, “You know what I want to do when I grow up, Mommie?”
Well, here it comes,
I thought, but it turned out to be pretty harmless. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to get down
underneath a cow and squeeze its breasts and get the milk out.”
Then the sweet sound
of that twin-bickering thing started. It
is one of those moments when I wish I had the tape recorder going (for
posterity) so they could hear themselves and how they acted when they get
older. They still have their squabbling
feasts, even on Facebook.
At any rate, Emma
said, “I can’t believe it, Evan! I
thought you wanted to be a fireman.
You’ve always wanted to be a fireman, and NOW you want to be a FARMER? Being a fireman, I thought, was much more
better for you, Evan?"
Evan replied, “I
don’t want to be a farmer, Emma! I just
said, ‘When I’m all-growned-up I just want to get down underneath the cow and
squeeze the breasts, one time, just one time, and get the milk out, Emma!’
One time doesn’t make you a farmer does it, Mommie?”
There are sometimes
when I really don’t want to get involved in their conversations unless I
ultimately have to. But this time I felt
I had no choice. “Well, true one time
does not make you a farmer. And it’s
called milking a cow. And the breasts on a cow are called utters. Please, don’t be upset with Emma. She’s just trying to take care of you or
something, I guess.” Trying to change
the subject or whatever I said, “Maybe Emma could milk the cow’s utters, too,
someday.”
“Hey, I could one
time!”
Evan said, “We
wouldn’t be farmers, Emma. Just milking
the…the…the…the cow’s utters?”
“Yes, utters.”
Then Emma asked,
“Evan, you still wanna’ be a fireman?”
“Yes, Emma.” He paused…and then came the real whammy…in a
real matter of fact way he said…“But I’m not going to eat the cow.” And that was that, he glanced out the window
with that look of deep thought again.
Well, I told my parents these two
stories. So, two weeks later, Evan &
Emma went to visit them in Michigan. And
my parents took them to…
|
Where they go on hayrides.
 | ||
And learn all sorts of new things…
like different ways to make maple syrup
(a staple product in their diet)…
And how to lead…
an animal out of its corral…
and, last but not least…
how to milk a cow, of course.
Evan was a vegetarian for eleven
years. He eats everything but the
kitchen sink. It’s like my dad used to
say, “Just wait until his taste buds explode, you’ll never get enough food in
him.”
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