15

today is the 15th anniversary of the day i became a vegetarian.

yes, i have kept track of it.  yes, i know that's ridiculous.  no, i can't help it.

may 25, 1996.  i made the decision that i was going to become a vegetarian for a week to see if i could do it.  i was 13.  13 year old me thought it would be a fun experiment.  but that night mom made pasta salad for dinner, from a kit, and the kit contained bacon bits that were all over the (completed) pasta salad.  i have this VIVID memory of that - of standing in the kitchen and realizing that i had failed just as soon as i started, and i made a decision that i would become a vegetarian tomorrow.  post-bacon bits.  so that was the last meat i ate on purpose: bacon bits.

may 26, 1996 it began.  in the 15 years since that date have i ever taken a bite (or more) of something and realized there was meat in it afterwards?  of course.  have i ever knowingly eaten meat?  no.  that week's experiment just kept going and has turned into 780 weeks (and counting).  i'm proud of this.  i can't imagine a situation in which i would go back to eating animals.  (but their delicious cheese?  why yes, please.)

when i tell people i'm a vegetarian i'm often asked why.  i don't exactly know what made me do it, what made me take that leap, but this is what i think: i was raised on a dairy farm.

(you know you want to see this picture again.)

we ate vegetables from the garden and eggs from the chickens and deer that the neighbors shot on our land and beef from cows we owned.  animals died and i saw death.  i don't think a lot of people are that close to their food - or that close to living things that die.  i was sensitive to where my food was coming from - i was (and am) just plain sensitive.  i don't like to see people or animals in pain.  most animals that we eat live painful lives and then are killed - but in the 21st century, in an industrialized and urbanized america, we don't see any of that.  if people had to raise and slaughter their own animals they would absolutely eat less meat.  i'm not willing to kill a shrimp so i don't eat shrimp.  i guess it's more complicated than that, but you know what i mean.

i'll step down from my soapbox now.