Burgers, chicken fingers, and bacon oh my! Animal meat and products flood our lives and fill our plates. Meat is such a part of our day that we hardly think about it, a chicken sandwich at lunchtime, a burger for dinner, what's new? Well, one day our meat eating ways slapped me in the face like a scorned ex. Let me take you back to the moment when it all happened.
Almost two years ago on a blissfully humid night in Southern Florida, I leisurely strolled around a fair. At this fair, I fell in love.
No, I didn't fall for a boy, instead, I fell for a cow.
This may seem weird to you but let me first explain my love for animals. I have owned dogs and horses for my entire life and have always had an appreciation for their honest and pure souls. You can just look into an animal's eyes and see their true intentions. They don't try to hide behind fake covers, like humans. With animals... what you see is what you get.
So, anyways back to the story.
I met this baby cow at the fair and he had the most adorably charismatic personality. Again, non-animal lovers might not understand what I mean by this. Animals can be like people- they have unique personalities that make each and every one of them so special. This baby cow was a bundle of cuteness and I must have stayed in his pen for an hour petting him while he tried to lick my cheeks.
After a substantial amount of time had passed my mom and my best friend pulled me from my future pet. I spent the rest of the fair going on rides, and eating my weight in cotton candy and ice cream, but that cow was still in the back of my mind. Obviously, my mom told me I couldn't keep the cow in my dorm room at Alabama, so I left a potential friend behind.
Flash forward to dinner the next night. My family, friends and I went to dinner at my grandparents' country club where they had a steak special. It sounded good to me so I ordered it. It arrived at the table a little while later and my best friend's eyes became skeptical.
She looked at me and said,
"you ordered steak?"
"Yeah why, do you have a problem with that?" I retorted.
"Well it's just that you wanted a cow yesterday, and now you're eating one, that's a little weird."
She said that, now smiling at me as I took a bite of my meal. Immediately, I turned a shade of green and ran to the bathroom. I didn't eat my meal that night and turned my back on beef. As time passed I also turned my back on other meats.
Vegetarianism is not for everyone but it is for the animal lovers. As my Best Friend pointed out that night at the fair, "you just love animals so much and I love that – but I just don't." That's ok, not everyone has to love animals and not everyone has to become a vegetarian. I have not regretted going meat free for a moment and to me, animals are friends and not food.
