My friend sent an email this evening, describing an important moment in her family life that had just occurred over dinner. Her daughter is just a little over 3 years old. The little girl's name is changed (in case there are any chickens reading my blog).This is sort of disturbing. Yet funny. I couldn't resist sharing...
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Subject: Since I last wrote, I've become a vegetarian....
Anya and I were sitting down to our dinner (chicken, peas, applesauce, etc.) and all of a sudden, as Anya was eating some chicken off a drumstick, she asked the inevitable: "Mama, is this from a chicken, like the ones I saw at the county fair the other day?"
Mama: [Gulp] "Yes, honey." [Anya had been enthralled by the poultry barn with the variety of chickens, ducks, pheasants, turkeys, peacocks, etc.--many of them very exotic and with beautiful feathers. She was more enthused in there than in the large-animal barns.]
Anya: "Well, what IS this? How do they get it?" [Trying, I assume to ask me what in the heck it was that she was eating, and where it came from.]
Mama: [Gulp. Cough. Not able to come out with the full facts.] "Uh, well, uh, this is from the chicken. We eat it." [Feeling absolutely inadequate, and starting to lose my appetite.]
Anya: "So, you mean this is from chickens? Well, do they take the FACES off?"
Mama: [I'm one nanosecond from fainting....] "Yes, honey, but we only eat this part." [AHHHH... I've chickened out, can't say the truth, I'm starting to realize what I've gotten myself into. I've almost lost my mind.]
Anya: "They take the faces OFF? What do they do with them?"
Mama: [I've totally stopped eating by this time. Can't even down a bite of applesauce.]
Anya: [She's just taken another bite] "So, this is a chicken's BONE????? A BONE?" [Naturally, the one piece she bit into revealed an area of dried blood on the bone....] "Mama, is this BLOOOOOOOOD? Where did it come from—the chicken's NECK?"
Mama: "No, honey, it came from the chicken's leg."
Anya: "So, why did it get there?"
Mama: "It's not very nice, is it? Maybe we just shouldn't eat any more chicken."
Anya: "You're right, Mama. It's yucky. I'm going to give this bone to a dog."
Mama: [With that, I couldn't eat another bite. Felt like I was a totally inadequate parent, felt nauseous, and wanted to go outside and get some air.] "Maybe we should just eat vegetables the next time and not chicken. Let's go outside and take a long walk, Anya."
Anya: "Okay, let's take a walk. Can I have a lime popsicle?"
Mama: YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And that's how I just became a vegetarian.
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It's really Anya's word choice that fascinated me here. Why ask about the "faces," I wonder.
And now Mama has anticipated a possible follow up to this incident: when her daughter asks about the chicken-egg relationship. No, not what comes first, what they are. She is planning her answer for that one in advance...
Oh, and my only explanation/excuse for that "chickened out" pun was that the author was distraught. Very, very distraught.
1 comment:
Super interesting moment. As a "flexitarian" (ovo/lacto/pesco "vegetarian"), I'm fascinated by how removed we are from our basic functions. I can't say how I would react as a parent, but as an uncle/godfather/older dude, I try to get the young'uns to square up with who we are--omnivores. We evolved eating a variety of things, and these things were nearly all living creatures (except things like salt and some other chemical additives). Live mostly lives off of other life (even photosynthesis is supplemented by the nitrogen, etc. that comes from decaying, formerly living stuff). It's one of the reasons I find anthropomorphism and human exceptionalism so creepy. If we are so special, and we only can identify with things that are like us, then we divorce ourselves from the crazy and sometimes brutal churn of life that we are a part of. Of course, I don't like chicken all that much outside of the buffalo wing variety (and I like the sauce mainly, and eat it with tofu instead), so I would have little trouble avoiding this particular situation. It must be tough confronting our own brutality the moment your child is developing some pretty fierce empathy.
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