I've been a vegetarian since I was 5. What happened was fairly simple. My mom read a book to me that was marketed to children but was actually very sophisticated in content. The book basically described a young girl dipping her hands in the blood-soaked pot containing dead eels being prepared for food.
I asked if all meat was really dead animals, and she said yes. I then told her I would no longer be eating meat, and haven't since.
When you're 5, even something as drastic as a complete dietary change seems uncomplicated. If it was once alive, I wouldn't eat it.
But as I got older and my knowledge base expanded, I found myself having to make decisions that would set precedence for the future of my vegetarianism. Plants were alive. Can I eat those? Sure. Therefore, my vegetarianism was defined as not eating anything that could move on its own.
But even that got complicated when friends argued that Venus Flytraps move by themselves. Who the hell eats Venus Flytraps anyway? I don't ask meat-eaters if they eat fire belly toads or naked mole rats. Though I'd be willing to bet the snot-nosed kids who challenged my vegetarianism are three for three.
Then there came the question of animal products. I decided it was OK if it came from an animal, like milk, but not if an animal had to die to make it, like they would to make chicken broth. Of course, when I was a kid, no one told me that the proper name for the liquid part of the soup was broth. I'd just go to a restaurant and ask if an animal was dipped in the soup, which the waiters found adorable.
In fact, waiters and waitresses tended to think a vegetarian under 10 was just the cutest little thing.
But a neurotic teenage vegetarian? Not so much.
Is there any meat in the Strictly Vegetarian Vegetable Explosion?"" I asked the waitress at the vegetarian restaurant.
""No, for the fourth time, there is no meat in any of our entrees.""
""Could you ask the chef one more time?"" I responded. ""What about really small things, like nematodes or kakalas?""
She rolled her eyes and stomped off to the kitchen.
""He says there are no nematodes in our kitchen and that kakalas don't exist,"" she said when she returned.
""I think they do on Mars,"" I said. ""Can you ask about Venus Flytraps?""
Finally, as I prepared to graduate high school and leave home, I came to terms with the fact that eating out will inevitably lead to unintentional, usually unnoticed, meat eating.
I've fallen into the habit of doing a routine check, especially at ethnic restaurants, which often tend to put seafood in their sauces.
Such was the case a few weeks ago at P.F. Chang's.
I told my boyfriend, Jeff, what I wanted and asked him to order it after drilling the waitress on the routine questions while I went to the bathroom.
When I came back, I found a frantic waitress. She had removed all the sauces from the table on the off chance that maybe the chef had accidentally added oyster to them.
She later removed my Diet Coke, Jeff's water, the right side of my dinner and our cheesecake.
""I'm sooo sorry,"" she said. ""I think the man who drank out of your drinking glass last night ordered seafood and the girl who ate off your plate last week eats meat sometimes. But she only ate half her dinner. So you're good with the left side.""
""What about the cake?"" I asked. She shrugged.
""I was just hungry.""
I glanced over at Jeff, who was huddling sheepishly in the corner of the booth.
""Did I forget to tell you,"" he began, ""that I told her you were deathly allergic to shellfish?""
""Yeah, I think you forgot to mention that,"" I told him as I watched our waitress take a bite of cheesecake at a table in the corner while wiping the sweat from her terrified brow.
If you've ever served Kiera at a restaurant, e-mail wiatrak@wisc.edu for a formal apology.
