As I write this, I am covered in blood and barbecue sauce. My keyboard is a Pollock painting of reds and browns, with tacky bits of bone and sinew clinging to my QWERTY row. I tell you this for full disclosure, so you can understand, perhaps sympathize, perhaps lend a commiserate ear (or trotter, or snout) to my dilemma: Despite my best efforts in parenting, despite my fiery discourses at the backyard grill, despite a sink regularly full of well-gnawed chicken bones, I have managed to raise my son with the terrible flaw of rebellion. My boy, my former brother in bacony goodness, is a…
Vegecontrarian!
As much as I applaud the anti-cruelty philosophy behind my son’s vegetarianism, I’m beginning to suspect that he doesn’t entirely get that being a vegetarian means you have to eventually eat some vegetables.
I was thrilled when he told me he was a vegetarian. Ok, I was bemused when… Look: I was holding a pork shoulder I’d slow roasted all day. I put the pork down, looked him in the eye, and said, “You know this means you have to eat zucchini, right?”
It hasn’t happened yet. So far my vegetarian’s diet is ramen noodles, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, and cuisine d’microwave. I haven’t seen a single green vegetable enter his mouth since he declared his unmeatfulness, and I hold little hope that I will.
It’s not like I don’t try. Witness our regular conversation. And by regular, I mean every seven minutes:
“Dad, I’m hungry.”
“Awesome, how about some Brussels sprouts?”
“Dad, please be serious. I’m starving.”
“Zucchini?”
“Yeah…no.”
“Asparagus?”
“Dad.”
“Spinach?”
“I had spinach last year.”
He’s a vegecontrarian! And he’s definitely mature for his 14 years. Most vegetarians don’t get all political until they can drive, because they need that first car for all the bumper stickers. Mine is constantly bringing up meat processing horror stories and asking me if I like the spleen bits in my hot dog. (They’re the best part, dammit.)
Currently, we’re in a standoff.
“Hey kid, I made instant Udon noodles.”
“Can’t. They use fish products.”
“Hot fries?”
“Fried in beef tallow.”
“Wheat grass?”
“Buffalo walked through it.”
“Gravel?”
“You scooped that out of the fish tank. I’m not stupid.”
I’ve handed him tabbouleh (“Ew!”), hummus (“Isn’t that Latin for dirt?”), falafel (“Papier mache meatballs”) and tofu (“Who sneezed in my stir fry?”). For a veggie, he’s a tad particular.
Maybe I have little room to complain, as he’s lost 12 pounds, his acne has cleared up, and he’s spending a lot more time outside (probably foraging). Even our grill time is not entirely lost. I buy him “smeat” (soy-based fake meat — as if Willy Wonka worked in produce), sign an affidavit that I scoured the grill of all meat remnants, then grill it right alongside my rib-eyes.
And I taunt. I taunt mercilessly, because I hate that he’s a vegetarian. I don’t care if you think it’s unsupportive. We’re talking U.S.D.A. here, people. We’re talking bacon. We took some visiting relatives to Gene & Georgetti’s. I ordered a lightly seared, full-grown steer. As I looked across the expanse of burnt flesh before me, I watched my son pick at a wan pasta-based afterthought and look wistfully askance.
Is it mean? Look, I don’t know. Maybe. But there are two ways this can go: I can taunt him into giving up his hippy stance, wherein he will actually eat broccoli as an accompaniment to a New York strip, or he will get fed up and start shoveling green things into his mouth just to show me he means business. Everybody wins.
Christopher Garlington lives in a standard two kids, wife, dog, corner-lot, two car, small business owner American dream package. He drives a 2003 Camry, sports a considerable notebook fetish, and smokes Arturo Fuente Partaga Maduros at the Cigar King as often as possible. His stories have appeared in Atlanta Parenting, Florida, Orlando, Orlando Weekly, Catholic Digest, Retort, Another Realm, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, South Lit, and other magazines. His short story collection, “King of the Road,” is available on Amazon.
