First of all let me explain to you what a vegetarian is. A vegetarian is someone who does not eat the flesh of an animal. People have trouble understanding this. I am met with opposition from people who have the audacity to scoff at my choice for either one of two reasons:

1. You eat dairy. You eat eggs. How can you call yourself a vegetarian?

-I'll say it again, vegetarians do not eat flesh. Last time I checked, cheese was not flesh. I don't have cheese attached to my bones, do you? No. There is blood in my veins...not milk. Dairy is a-ok!

2. You can eat chicken, right? What about fish? That's not meat.

-To me, these are the people who really have no clue what they are eating. These are the Jessica Simpsons of the world. Where did the assumption come from that if a meat is not red, it is not meat at all? CHICKEN AND FISH ARE MEAT. They are the muscle tissue of an animal. Meat. Yes?

The people in category one are your vegans. The category two peeps are just those who do not eat red meat. And do not let them ttry to tell you that they are vegetarians. Clear?

Now. The next question that everyone seems to be dying to know the answer to and the reason for my musing about food nomenclature is "Why would somebody not want to eat meat?".

The answer is....the lobster made me do it.

Actually, I'll start earlier than that. When I was a teenager, I started having some issues with eating meat. Gross-out issues. Nothing ethical. Just that I'd be in the middle of eating a hamburger once in a while and then I would start thinking about a cow I once saw while vacationing in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. And I would think about how cute she was just minding her own business, quietly chewing her cud in the field and that would be the end of my eating that burger.

And so on and so forth. It began happening more and more frequently as I got a little older. By the time I reached my early twenties I had given up red meat.

Then one night in February of my twenty second year, I was lying in bed watching television. A commercial came on, though I did not yet know what it was for. I saw the image of a man looking lovingly at something. Next, was an image of a lobster looking just as lovingly (or as lovingly as a lobster can look) while a song played in the background. The song was "Happy Together" by The Turtles.

I love that song and the image was so sweet, I propped myself up in bed waiting to see what was going to happen next. The man reached out his hand and gently placed it on the glass in front of the lobster, a gesture to which the lobster reciprocated with his little claw. It was such a tender moment between man and crustacean, I nearly had to wipe a tear from my cheek.

Next thing I knew, the BOILING RED LOBSTER IS BEING RIPPED STEAMING OUT OF THE POT!!!!! Beacause it is......Lobster Fest at Red Lobster!!!

My jaw dropped. My face screwed up. I couldn't breathe. My heart raced in disbelief of how I had just been duped. I began crying uncontrollably on my bed.

How tasteless! How uncouth! And I vowed right then and there to never eat meat again.

So the answer to the question is...the lobster made me do it.