“Hey, you see this cow. It’s big isn’t it, so cute right.”
Staring at the picture being shown to me I immediately felt a connection. A five-year-old me accepted this cow as my new best friend. My imagination ran wild as I begin to plan out our future together. I will feed the cow, then walk it. Bathe the cow, then play with it.
“The cow will be at your sister’s birthday party, you’ll see it there,” my father told me.
And so, I awaited the grand day. My emotions heightening as I grew closer to meeting my friend. Then finally the day arrived, the day I would be meeting my new friend. I waited and waited but the cow was nowhere to be seen.
I ultimately asked my dad “Where is the cow?”
“Well, it’s right here,” he says with a malevolent giggle.
I stared at the plate of food my father was showing me. Immediately, I made the connection and began sobbing. For the cow was at the party but not in the way I imagined.
The rest of the night I remained in a somber mood, unrested as well as starving. How could I eat the food? How could my family eat the food? How could I eat meat after this? And well I couldn’t.
This small, insignificant seeming moment brought a change in my life. A great diet change. I had become vegetarian in a household full of carnivores. As the days passed my family slowly realized that my new philosophy was not just something I would get over. Days turned to a month which meant that now my whole family followed a vegetarian diet. Eating animals was bad and I couldn’t bear to see my family doing such atrocious acts such as eating a piece of rib.
One day I found the perfect shirt. It was bright red with the face of a cow in the front and a dangling tail in the back. This shirt was a reminder to everyone of what they were consuming. It was a representation of my advocacy. So, while I may not be a true vegetarian anymore, the actions I did as a child affect me even now. In my family, we unnoticeably, rarely eat beef. We mostly base our diet on a mix of pork, carbs, and plants. A lifestyle we adapted only for a year changed the way we would eat for the rest of our lives. And the root of this all was an empathetic child who befriended a cow.
