VEGETARIANISM: DAY THREE
Today, I woke up hungry; either that or I was nervous about being in County Court Law No. Seven. I never did make it to the grocery store, never did buy oat meal, bananas, or yogurt. Luckily, Valerie still had some of here own oatmeal that she hadn’t eaten, Brown Sugar. Oatmeal and coffee, easy enough on vegetarian diet, not suspect.
I have not disclosed to Valerie that I intended to eat vegetarian for the next thirty days. Vegetarianism seems to be one of those pretentious contentions that you only disclose if you want others to think that you have moral superiority or extreme willpower. I know that asserting an allegiance, at least temporarily, to vegetarianism, Valerie would question my motives, not so much as my decision to eat more healthy, because in actuality, I’m not eating so healthy, but rather, that vegetarianism is associated with what Valerie used to call “farby.”
When someone says that they are eating vegetarian, everyone around them draws certain assumptions about that person, questioning the reasons, wondering why it is important that the vegetarian was required to announce the fact. Vegetarianism has become like a badge, a sort of club. Vegetarians proudly question all food choices, the ingredients contained in the food they order, as if any ingredient outside their diet is an allergen whose ingestion would cause instantaneous death. (True allergies are pretty scary. A few years ago, Valerie and I met a mom whose son passed away from eating food containing a certain nut to which he had a severe allergy.)
In the Bible, Jesus talks about fasting, a passage read every year during the Lenten season to remind Catholics that fasting should be done in private and not done as a badge of honor. Matthew 6:16-18 states: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”
For lunch, I had the remainder of the supper from last night, refried beans and rice on flour tortillas with tortilla chips. I do not mention my plan to remain vegetarian for thirty days to Valerie.
Valerie asked me to pickup a pizza on the way home. Usually, I buy the prepared pizzas for dinner, choosing to drive through the drive-thru so I do not have to get out of my car. Most of the time the prepared pizzas are topped with pepperoni, not only a meat, but probably the most obnoxious of meats, greasy and fatty. I ordered a cheese pizza but felt like I needed to come up with a reason for not buying a pizza without meat, just in case Valerie asked, to continue on with my deception and not reveal that I was experimenting with vegetarianism.
It was difficult to devise that the pepperoni may give me serious heartburn, something that I have suffered from in the past. Recently, the heartburn had been strong enough to last at least a day, giving Valerie and even my mother-in-law some concern.
I got home and mentioned that I bought a cheese pizza with no meat, with no reason for the purchase, with no explanation whatsoever. And she accepted the offering without questioning the choice, without sniffing out something suspicious.
Perhaps, vegetarianism should be like this, like sexuality, or other personal choice. Perhaps, it should be something which one practices in private, with one engaging in the practice not for the adulation one might think one might receive for maintaining a restrictive diet, but as an exercise of self-discipline as one might practice meditation.
If she asks, I won’t lie to her. But I won’t tell her until she asks. Let’s see how long it takes her to notice.
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