Vegetable-arian

I get teased quite a bit for being a vegetarian. For some reason people seem to think its funny. I haven't yet been able to work out exactly why, but it seems to be a guaranteed subject for mirth.

Sometimes people just don't get the whole vegetarian thing. They seem to think that you'll eat chicken and fish. You assure them that you do not eat chicken or fish - no flesh at all. So then they think that you may not eat the actual flesh, but you will eat anything that may have been cooked with, in, beside, in the juices of or made from the juices of, the meat. Sometimes all you can do is sigh to yourself, take a deep breath, and start back at the beginning.

Generally nobody can grasp exactly what you eat if you don't eat meat. Well, just as a sort of freak-experience, you eat vegetables. Either people don't like vegetables or they just forget that vegetables can be eaten on their own. Vegetables can be quite nice.

I have heard various jokes about vegetarians and have heard different ways of describing people who are vegetarians, but none, in my opinion, beats one I saw on a kids' movie.

There is this little girl called Madeline, who lives with 11 other girls in a school in Paris, France. It is run by a nun, called Miss Clavel. Madeline has to go to hospital and on the way back to the school, she rides in the back seat of the car, beside a chicken in a cage. She calls the chicken Fred. That evening, as a special celebration for Madeline's return home, they have Chicken Helene. Madeline looks at the meat on her plate and connects it with the chicken in the car. She flatly refuses to eat Fred - people don't eat their friends. One by one all the little girls refuse to eat the chicken. Miss Clavel turns to the next girl down the table and asks her whether or not she is going to eat her supper. "No! I'm a vegetable-arian too!!"

I'm a vegetable-arian too.