Vegetarian

Why am I vegetarian? To me, it's about trying to treat all life, not just human life, with compassion and respect. If I don't need to take life, I'd rather not do it. I mentioned before that I love a lot, and that is the main reasoning for my choice.

In a nutshell that sums it up pretty well, however; there is a lot more to it than that.

• How can we justify our treatment of animals? Why is it that the feelings of one animal aren't as significant as the feelings of another? People treat animals as companions when it's convenient for them, but turn savage at meal time. We know somehow, intuitively maybe, that animals think and feel, and would rather live than die.
• The cruelty of animal farming, where animals are pumped full of hormones to grow faster, and full of antibiotics and chemicals to keep them alive even when they are sick and suffering, just so they produce more milk or more meat; chemicals that end up in our bodies, and flow through our blood now.

My decision to be a vegetarian certainly isn't going to save the world, but it's a small step that I have decided to take. I'm not a vegan by any means, but I try not to be associated with anything that involves the merciless slaughter of innocent victims, such as wearing leather.

I have never felt the need to justify my decision to anybody, as a matter of fact I didn't even tell people that I quit eating meat for a very long time because people aren't sensitive to the ethics of others, especially if they can't relate.

My mother told me that she had a difficult time getting me to eat meat even as a child, and this is kind of funny to me, because my niece is a little over a year old, and she blatantly refuses to eat meat, even when they try to trick her she scrunches up her face and back out it comes.

When I was in high school I had this friend who lived out on some gravel road. His house was a little farm house at the end of a long lane, and right next to his house was a cow pasture. The cows didn't belong to him, but his landlord owned all of the property, so I assumed they were the landlord's cows. The gate to the pasture was literally at the end of my friend's driveway, and we were there the day they brought the little calves in. There was one little calf in particular that just had the personality of a little dog, she pranced around all cheery and played and ran up to us so we could pet her, and she just basked in all the attention that she got. We have many pictures of this cow that we affectionately named Cha-Cha, and as she grew, there are videos of us trying to ride her.

HAHAHA Cha-Cha was quite a clever little cow, and would stand still while we stacked up chairs and buckets to be tall enough to reach her back, but just as we would swing a leg over, she would step off to the side, sending you tumbling down to the ground between the two of you. Of course the rest of us in the group would be laughing hysterically, and I think that Cha-Cha knew how happy we all were, and I firmly believe that she was a happy girl too. She would just stand there over and over again as we made fools of ourselves time after time....

I was in high school at the time, and I was sitting there in my last class of the day, and this is back in the day of pagers, and my pager went off, and it was my friend. Of course, I had to wait until I got home to call him back, but when I did he told me that the truck was there loading up the cows, and he thinks that Cha-Cha was on it, but he didn't know for sure because the rest of the cows took off to the other side of the pasture.

What a sad day it was, I hurried up out there, and I passed the cattle truck on the lane, and Cha-Cha was nowhere to be found. I cried and cried, and vowed never to eat beef again because it all I would be able to think about was how I could possibly be eating my friend Cha-Cha.

What a heartwarming story huh? It's been about 9 years now since I've eaten red meat, and close to 6 since I've eaten any other form of meat. Haha, I was pretty grossed out actually, I was eating a chef salad with turkey on it, and my fork wouldn't go into the turkey, and when it finally did i looked at it, and it just reminded me of human flesh....I dropped my salad and ran away to get sick, and never touched anything to do with meat again.

I'm sure you probably could have lived without that random little piece of information, but I don't mind sharing :)