One Hundred and Twenty-one, Abandoned? Part Deux

So after escaping the zombies in the small town in Louisiana, we came upon a Popeye's fast food place. Upon going in, I glance at the menu, wince and ask the cashier hesitantly,

"Are the red beans and rice vegetarian?"

"No"

"Uhh...do you have anything vegetarian?"

The cashier paused, then glanced over to her right at the drive-thru lady.

"Do we have anything vegetarian?"

The drive-thru lady also pauses in her activity of putting an order in a to-go bag. She glances back at the manager in the back.

"Do we have anything vegetarian?" She asks.

The manager looks up at me confused. She ponders the menu selections which she knows by heart. Then a lightning bolt hits!

"We can make the red beans and rice without the sausage gravy. That's vegetarian." And now that she has one, she's on a roll. "We also have coleslaw. No? Ok, there are onion rings as well."

My eyes lit up at these, the first option that sounded appetizing. I had Popeye's for lunch that day, and it consisted of an order of onion rings and a fast-food Mississippi Mud Cake. Not an experience I hope to re-create anytime soon.

Twelve, Meat

I can still recall the pepperoni pizza that my friends ordered while staying at my uncle's home. It felt really weird to watch it come into the house and for everyone to just eat it as if it was another pizza. And that's all it really was, just another pizza. I don't think it bothered my uncle in the slightest (although I think my aunt would have freaked a bit if she'd known). But it made me uncomfortable to see.

I'm a vegetarian. I was raised that way and have not felt the desire to even try meat in my entire life. I don't really care to preach to anyone on why they should or should not become vegetarians. It's not my place. I respect your belief in your own ideas just the same as I expect to be respected for my ideologies. So then come the questions, would it be right for me to ask people I love and care about not to eat meat in my future home? What about homes of relatives? Do I ask them to check with my relatives if they can have meat in their house? It's just stuff we never pondered.

Part of what goes into my beliefs is that meat scares me because it's an unknown. I avoid the meat sections of super-markets, I don't purchase meats, I don't feel comfortable touching anything that has or recently had meat on it. But then I don't mind purchasing entire meals for friends, even when it's beef (although veal did make me squirm inside). I obviously eat out which is a sign of faith in a system that I know has flaws (restaurants mass-produce food for people to eat and don't necessarily have the best dish-washing systems; it's unlikely that I've gone my entire life without ingesting some minuscule portion of meat here in the US). Through these two views, I drew an arbitrary line. I would trust in restaurants to maintain cleanliness and not pursue eating meat on purpose. And that's worked fine for me. I just realized that the line doesn't end at the restaurant or my friends' homes, but will one day enter my own home as well.

The correct "answer" to whether friends can eat in my future home is that it's my house and what I say goes, visitors' beliefs non-withstanding. My friends tell me that and the part of me that makes decisions tells me that. Yet I feel a deep guilt when I cause them to forgo what they want to eat.

That's where I stand on meat.