Every vegan gets sick of hearing the same questions through a shit-eating grin:
“Why’d you go vegan? Where’dya get your protein? What about those poor defenseless carrots herpderp?”
And I guess what pisses me off about it is really more because I generally am not the one to bring it up rub-it-in-your-face style. (I’ve seen that and thought, “Think I’ll avoid that route”) People find out by probing; I only really talk about it here in this blog – less in public – unless someone notices I’ve asked the waiter to have them hold the bovine fluid products and then asks me about it. Which is fine, if they’re being civil and asking out of genuine trying-to-learn-about-other-people interest. But when I have to turn my morsel choices into a moral explanache, it kinda makes me lose my appetite altogether and I wanna just go breatharian. Or anorexic. (Are the two any different?) That’s why I’m in love with this video that just got shared on my wall that says it way better than I do.
This kid’s unintentionally Socratic approach to explaining why he doesn’t want to eat animals, is fantastic:
As the old idiom goes, this “out of the mouths of babes” thing is two-fold: a good defense his mom can’t argue and also a desire to keep all animals, quite literally, “out” of his mouth. He looks more like a miniature adult man, sitting there – gesticulating his point out. (Is this what the new toddlers are like now? Is this the transhuman version I’ve been told about on the I-believe-politicians-are-reptilians corner of Youtube? If so, I may change my mind about shutting down the factory irreversibly.) Granted, his young eyes have probably been saved from seeing documentaries on the horror farms that extract eggs and effluvia from creatures in a prolonged-torture that’s almost worst than just being straight up murdered. So he’s probably not gonna go full vegan till he gets a bit older and sees a film featuring sadistic meat manufacturers, bludgeoned animals, and a sea of baby chicks getting lawn-mowered alive. But it will make for a very good “I’ve been a vegetarian since I was three…” story for his hipster friends later on down the line.
But (*descends dietary soap box*) you wanna know who’s really the hero of this video?
The mom. I mean, she sat there listening to his questions, answering honestly, and waiting for him to contemplate her responses about why they had to cut up the animals. She listened when he reasoned that he didn’t want to eat it because he wanted the animals to “stay standing”. And instead of treating him like he was being a disobedient brat, she let his involuntary message seep in until she was so moved by it that she said, “Okay – we won’t eat that anymore”. My ass would’ve gotten the wooden spoon. Still covered in remnants of the cow stew we were just served. Then again, I wasn’t a two foot dietary philosopher child in a high chair at that age.
And, if we’re being honest, I’m still not.
Which is why I’ll refer any future snide diet inquirers to this video instead’a trying to reply myself.