A Vegetarian Assault

Someone slipped me a mickey at work….

Ok well it wasn't a drug, but it was still enough to stun. Plus I thought about vomiting. If only in protest.

This lady I work with is a little, well, hm… Anyway, that’s beside the point. What happened is that we were having our monthly pot luck. Everyone knows I am a vegetarian; it’s a novelty around here. They treat me like an albino or a bearded lady. They like to look and talk about me when I’m standing in front of them, as if I don’t hear it. Sometimes they like to touch.

So when pot lucks come around, there’s always talk of my food choices and what I will and won’t eat. And the truth is, I kind of use it to my advantage; I mean, I can eat fruit salad, of course, but when I know it’s bathed in jell-o or miracle whip or sugar or who knows what, I’d rather not. So I just say, “oh I’m sorry! I can’t eat that. I’ll just munch on this banana I brought from home.”

So it’s our Mardi Gras-themed lunch meeting pot luck and I wait until most of the crowd has gone through the line before joining them. This gives me a little more freedom to pick out what I can eat without someone getting their feelings hurt that I skipped their Schnucks trans-fats cake or their mini-Ritz-cracker pizzas.

But I digress. Here’s how the incident went:

Co-worker: “Hey Meghan, I made this awesome broccoli slaw! You’ll love it! I made it just for you!
Meg: “Oh YUM! It’s vegetarian, right?”
CW: “YUP! Just some, you know, broccoli and stuff.”
M: eating.
M: eating.
Pause.
CW: “You know what’s in there? CHICKEN! Ha ha! I used a pack of chicken-flavored Ramen noodles for the spices! I didn’t tell you because I know you wouldn’t eat it then! Ha ha!”
M: “OH MY! No, I’m sorry, I can’t eat this. I don’t eat meat. Any meat. Ever.”
CW: “But it’s just a powder! You didn’t even know it was in there!”
M: “No, I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s not you, it’s me.” Apology apology, etc. and so on.
CW: feelings hurt.

Wait, did you catch that? Feelings hurt.

COME ON!

…it wasn’t until hours later that I realized she’d planned the whole trickery! The NERVE!

I’m now just awaiting my moment to slip some saturated fatty bacon onto her burger… wait that won’t work. OK then some cholesterol-laden butter onto her bread. Grr… no… Um maybe some aspartame-filled Sweet n’ Low into her tea? Oh well. There is no retaliation possible. I’ll just have to become a vegetarian martyr, having taken one for the team! But another thing occurs to me... since when are Ramen Noodles a spice? Oh what is this world coming too? Screw it! Forget everything! I'm goin' to macdonald!