To All Living Things
Last Week's Column

Journey of a Latent Vegetarian
by Kathy Gay

ave you ever done something in your life and, looking back on it, wondered why you did it? Or perhaps it was something you didn’t do? Let me guess -- you’re nodding your head in agreement, right? After all, that’s part of what it means to be human. We live and learn, and sometimes, some of us, for reasons we can’t totally comprehend, we take the long way around.

I always find myself thinking about such things whenever I contemplate the long and winding road I took becoming a vegetarian. I should probably qualify that statement. The change was a long time coming, but when it happened, it happened fast. I started to eliminate meat completely from my diet just over a year ago, initially intending to stop there. But as it turned out, it didn’t stop there. Before I knew it, I had said adios to eggs and dairy as well. It all seemed very natural, and it continues to feel so right that I can’t help wondering what took me so doggone long. Then I call to mind certain incidents in my life, and I realize I should have paid closer attention then to my reactions to those events, for if I had, I would have made the change a long time ago. Here’s the kind of thing I’m talking about...

I’ll begin with the story of the time Mom fixed something different for Sunday dinner. Have you ever found yourself looking down at a plate in front of you and wondering just what it is you’re looking at? It happened to me. Mom had called us all to dinner -- my dad, my sister and me. I had been studying while she was preparing the meal, so I had no idea what was in store. For that matter, neither did anyone else. Even before sitting down, I noticed that something was different. Ah-h-h, yes, she had already placed the meat on each of our plates. Our normal way of doing things was to pass the plates or dishes of food around.

So, here was this piece of meat already sitting on my plate, and, to tell you the truth, it looked a bit odd. I asked Mom what it was, and she said it was chicken. I said there was no way this could be chicken unless it was a very deformed chicken. It certainly didn’t look like any chicken I had ever seen, and I wanted to know what it was before I would eat it. Finally, she admitted that it wasn’t chicken after all -- it was rabbit!!! A-a-a-ck!! Without even thinking, I said, "Thumper? Thumper? You’re feeding us Thumper? There’s no way I’m gonna eat Thumper!" (This is what happens when one is raised on Disney. Obviously, there’s no way I could ever eat Bambi either.)

Needless to say, I didn’t touch that meat, and I pretty much ruined this momentous occasion for everyone else. Even Mom couldn’t eat it after that. Thumper’s relative was fed to our dog Josie, and Mom never tried springing that kind of surprise again. At least, not that I know of.

So now I knew I couldn’t eat a cute animal that starred in a Disney film. It would have been nice if I had reflected a bit at the time on why I could eat some animals and not others, but I didn’t do that. As a result, I had to endure a few more such incidents...

It’s now 1976, and I’m spending the summer in England. For eight weeks I was studying at New College at Oxford University as part of an exchange program the university had with Ohio State, and for another four weeks I was traveling around the country. That time was probably the best three months of my life. I was in a state of awe most of the time, pinching myself and hardly believing I was really there, surrounded by all that history. And all that stunning architecture -- they’re not called the "dreaming spires" of Oxford for nothing. The garden wall at New College dated back to the Middle Ages and our "dorms" were 500 years old. Meals were served in a huge hall with high ceilings and wood-paneled walls hung with paintings of men I’d never heard of, and several long rows of oak tables ran the full length of the room. It really was grand.

It was sometime during the first week of the program that lamb was served for dinner. I had never eaten a cute little lamb before. Not only had I never eaten a cute little lamb, but just two years before, in the spring of 1974, I had fed some lambs born on my grandparent’s farm, fed them special formula out of baby bottles. That spring three lambs were born whose mothers disowned them -- two male lambs that Grandma named George and Blackie, and one very fragile little girl she called Annie. One of my very favorite photographs of my grandmother, which I keep in a frame on the table next to my bed, comes from that time. She’s feeding George and Blackie their formula through the pasture fence, their little rear ends facing the camera.

Just in case you don’t know, I’ll tell you now -- little lambs are terribly cute. They’ve got beautiful, sweet faces with gorgeous eyes, and they are fun to watch when they play. Once they learn to trust you, they might even follow you around, and they’re sure to come running over when they see you’ve got a baby bottle in your hand.

So, two years later, I’m supposed to eat lamb for dinner? I think not. All I could see were George and Blackie and Annie. I couldn’t even stand to watch anyone else eat it. For the rest of the term, whenever lamb was being served for dinner, I rounded up at least one other student and we went OUT.

Another similar memorable moment occurred during that summer in England, this time at Stratford-upon-Avon. The Oxford Program was over, and I was now doing some traveling around the country. For the final two weeks, I was joined by my mother and sister and one of Mom’s friends. We had spent the day looking around the town, visiting William Shakespeare’s birthplace and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, all the things that tourists do. That evening we were going to the theater, and we decided to eat dinner at a restaurant nearby. After looking over the menu, I ordered the trout. I had never had it before and thought I’d "give it a go."

Well, when the waiter brought us our dinners, there was the trout lying on the plate set down in front of me. It wasn’t moving, of course, but it looked like it could have. Its tail was there, and so was its head. And let’s not forget the eyes. Here was a fish that truly looked like a fish, and that didn’t sit well with me. No way I wanted to look at that fish-on-a-plate staring up at me.

When the waiter came back to our table to see if everything was all right, I politely asked him if he could please take the fish-on-a-plate back to the kitchen, and either he or someone else -- anyone else -- could someone please cut off the head and the tail of the fish? He looked at me, not totally comprehending the gravity of the situation, and said, "It’s really very easy to do..." And I said, "It doesn’t matter how easy it is to do, I just can’t look at it."

So, the waiter took the fish-on-a-plate back to the kitchen and emerged shortly thereafter with a decapitated and tail-less fish-on-a-plate, and set it back down on the table in front of me. You’ve probably guessed how the rest of this story goes. By this time, the damage was done. I not only couldn’t eat the fish-on-a-plate, I couldn’t eat anything else on the plate, not even the peas (yes, there were peas -- there were always peas). I never had trout again.

So, now let’s fast-forward to around 1982. I had moved to California by then, and one of the men I worked for was hosting a huge dinner party at his home. So what was for dinner, you ask? Lobster. I had never eaten lobster and by now fully understood it was too late for me to learn to eat some new kind of animal, particularly one that looked like what it really was. And one that was going to be boiled alive at that. So I told him, "Thanks anyway, but I think I’ll pass on the party, I just don’t care for lobster," and he said, "No-no-no, not a problem, I’ll barbecue a steak for you, you’re coming to the party." So I went to the party.

I’m not going to discuss how much I enjoyed hearing the scraping sounds of those poor lobsters’ claws as they struggled with all their might to escape the big tubs on the kitchen floor. And I’m not going to tell you how much fun it was to be surrounded on all sides by people cracking and mangling and picking at the bodies of those same poor lobsters. It’s fifteen years down the road, and I’m still amazed at how much I remember about that party, particularly considering the amount of champagne I consumed. I even remember the horrendous headache that followed.

There you have it -- just a few of the incidents in my life that could have been turning points at the time, if I’d have let them. If I had paid better attention then, I think I would have recognized that maybe, just maybe I had a veggie heart, and maybe, just maybe I’d be a whole lot happier not eating animals of any kind. I guess some of us have thicker skulls than others, and it takes a bit longer for the truth to hit us, and finally and absolutely sink in.

So, if by chance you’re reading this and thinking, ‘This sounds so much like me" or "That reminds me of the time that...," please take the advice of one who’s been there. Close your ears to the din of the meat-eating world and listen to your heart. Follow where it leads, and do it sooner rather than later. You’ll be glad you did.

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Kathy Gay is a vegan, and has been a member of Amnesty International for nearly 10 years, where she has worked on numerous campaigns. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a business analyst for a leading California bank.

Kathy's column, To All Living Things, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.