“So you’re a vegetarian, huh? Y’eat chicken?”
Of course I do. I’d love to chat, but I really need to go now. I have to go out to my garden because some of my chicken plants are ripe and I really want to pick them before they get too soft and mealy. I like my chickens fresh off the vine.
There are many degrees of vegetarianism. There are the pesco-vegetarians (they eat seafood, but no other meat), ovo-lacto vegetarians (no meat at all, but dairy products are allowed), and vegans (if it came from an animal, had anything to do with an animal, or at any time inadvertently brushed up against an animal, no dice). Vegetarians sometimes will move across these categories. For example, someone might decline to eat dairy but still eat shellfish, on the theory that a clam might as well be a plant. Or someone might otherwise be vegan but still be willing to consume honey, on the theory that bees don’t really mind if a human eats their honey as long as they get enough themselves. So when one offers only the vague “vegetarian” as a self-description, others can be forgiven for wondering exactly what foods are acceptable.
But the chicken guy is kind of pushing the limit.
I’ve seen another version of this play out in Asian restaurants, and it goes something like this:
“Is there any meat in your egg rolls?”
“No, no meat. Just pork.”
Just pork. Time to go pick the pig plants. I’ve speculated that this may be a language barrier problem. It’s happened so many times that I’ve started to wonder whether perhaps the English word “meat” sounds a lot like the Chinese word for “anything other than pork.” This theory is supported by the experience of Trailhead’s spouse in China, with an interpreter. When the interpreter specifies no meat in Chinese, there is never a “no meat, just pork” interchange.
Or it could be a cultural issue, in which the ham takes on such a mythic position in a society that it begins to transcend identification as a lowly meat. Apparently the Italians have the same issue with prosciutto, according to this article, which relates the following vignette:
A man walks into a bar and asks for a sandwich, no meat. The waiter brings back a bun with ham and cheese. "I said no meat," the man objects. The waiter replies: "That's not meat - that's prosciutto."Oh, okay. What was I thinking?
Postscript: Feel free to leave your statements on why vegetarianism is idiotic in the first place in the comments section. Though I’ll save you the trouble by reciting some of them here: 1) it’s unnatural, because cavemen ate meat; 2) well, aren’t carrots people too? 3) you can’t be healthy unless you eat regular servings of fatty red meat ; 4) all you people eat is lettuce. So, just for the record: I have no problem with meat-eaters. If I shunned carnivores, I'd get pretty lonely pretty quickly. By all means, go enjoy a turkey sandwich. Or a tofurkey.
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