How I Became a Vegan

A week ago, at breakfast, my alphabet cereal spelled Doom in my bowl. I decided then and there to switch to Cheerios. Two days later my Cheerios wrote Doom in my bowl. It seems Cheerios stole a D and an M from the alphabet cereal box, which sits nearby on the shelf in the breakfast section. I felt a conspiracy brewing and rifled through my cupboards to find the ringleader because I’m not the kind of guy to slink away when my food staples start ganging up on me. I’m the apex predator here, not those multi-grain minions. I felt if I could identify the instigator I could put an end to this uprising.

A can of spam seemed promising at first, since no one knows where it comes from, or what it is (you say some sort of meat and I say, where’s your proof?), or why it hangs around looking all innocuous in that festive can with soft shoulders. After some thought I gave up on that line of reasoning because no one would ever listen to spam: spam always goes around telling people they need a larger penis, or that Nigerians want your help moving around money in large bank accounts, or that beautiful girls in Russia are anxious to marry you; no, spam couldn’t possibly be the ringleader. It would have to be a staple that other foods would trust. One they would follow, one with authority, provenance, and cunning.

Salt! That had to be it. Salt is ubiquitous and insidious: it’s in everything. Salt runs rampant through all foodstuffs. Surely Salt was the behind-the-scenes puppet-master subjugating the minds of the other foods. But there was a problem, I didn’t put any Salt on my Cheerios or alphabet cereal, only my crazy Uncle Leathers puts Salt on cereal, so how did it convey the message to threaten me? The logic was breaking down, arghhh! Nothing made sense. This conspiracy went deep and a mass interrogation was in order. I got right to it.

I hear what you’re saying, you gossipers, making fun of my deductions. You say I’m seeing conspiracies where there’s none. You may call me unreliable, but how would you explain these events? I’m not crazy! I’m stressed out and maybe a little frazzled and you would be too in my situation, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about. What was I talking about just now? Right, Salt, except it wasn’t likely to have been the ringleader.

I tossed every food item from the cupboards onto the floor and stared down at them unblinking, my arms crossed, my foot tapping, my brows furled. My food sure didn’t look so uppity as it lay there all scattered about on the tile. No one was fessing up though. I was going to have to get tougher. I stepped on a bag of marshmallows—pressing down slowly—squashing them flat as Nebraska a section at a time under my blue bunny slippers, which I wear when my wife isn’t around—they’re so much more comfy than mine—but don’t go telling her though, she wouldn’t understand. Anyway, tensions rose, the foods were about to crack, I could feel it, and that’s when I heard the noise in the bathroom. I twisted my bunny slipper hard into the marshmallows for a last bit of emphasis and went to investigate the sound.

In the bathroom I found my nine-year-old son brushing his teeth while hanging upside down from the shower rod. He claimed he was Bat-boy, which is odd because yesterday he was Super Fly. That wasn’t what caused the noise though. My seven-year-old daughter, Emo, stood outside, banging on the window, trying to get back in. Why was she in the yard at eight in the morning? I asked Bat-boy but he just shrugged his wings and spat toothpaste into the tub. I opened the window and she climbed in. I told her the door was wide open out back but she said she never came in the same way she went out. I asked her how she handled rooms with only one door and no windows? She said she left those backwards and that nullified the prior entry. She said this like it was something profound. And people say I’m odd.

Emo followed me to the kitchen and I told her not to eat anything on the floor because I was still gathering evidence against them. She went to the fridge and got a jug of orange juice and took a big swallow before I could reach her and tell her that was daddy’s special lunch juice. Her eyes went huge and she shot a geyser of vodka-laced OJ all over the food on the floor. I told her to go get dressed as it was going to be a McDonald’s kind of morning since the food here couldn’t be trusted. She came back later dressed all in black. I told her to go find something more appropriate for school and she said that she was considering mentioning the OJ incident during show-and-tell in Mrs. Babbleglot’s class, and then again when Mommy got home. I said she looked fabulous in black, that it fit her personality perfectly. I told her to go get her backpack and tell Bat-boy to hurry up or we’d be late again and the principal was getting downright surly about our late arrivals. I mean, sheesh, take it easy lady, I got them there on time three Wednesdays ago.

My wife came home drunk at 6 p.m. and found me in the kitchen slapping around a frozen chicken. Normally I don’t like to be interrupted during an interrogation, but the chicken wasn’t talking. She asked me (my wife, the chicken wasn’t talking, remember?) how all the food got onto the floor and none had made it to the stove. I launched into an explanation of the troubling events leading up to the treacherous pantry revolt that I had been trying to put down all day. My thesis was brilliant and I had irrefutable evidence; I argued with flawless analogies and syllogisms that would have made Plato weep with pride. My conclusion came out pretty weak though since I hadn’t yet found the ringleader. No, hold on a sec., let me think, that’s not what happened. I remember now, she came home and found me assaulting that recalcitrant Foster Farms fowl and I explained everything and then she said she was going to go get drunk. The important thing to remember from this paragraph is that she got drunk.

Later I found a perfectly crafted arrow on the kitchen floor constructed out of graham crackers. I immediately called upstairs to Emo and asked her to come down. She stood over the mess on the floor with one shaved eyebrow cocked. I asked her if she made the arrow but she claimed she had become a nihilist during Social Studies class and therefore didn’t believe in creating anything. She mashed the graham crackers underfoot and ascended back to her lofty heights. I knew Bat-boy hadn’t done it because I’d been hearing him bumping into things upstairs ever since he got home from school. Upon further investigation I discovered that the arrow pointed at the flattened bag of marshmallows. The foodstuffs were trying misdirection, but I didn’t believe for a second that the marshmallows were guilty. This was a classic frame-up. The ringleader knew I couldn’t get anything out of those de-puffed mallows. Well, he was messing around with the wrong fella . . . whoever he was.

I began to slap the chicken again. I didn’t expect it to talk. I did it to strike fear into the other foodstuffs. I heard a cough and turned and there stood a bottle of corn syrup. Leave the chicken alone, Corn Syrup said. I should’ve known. Like Salt, Corn Syrup was in everything; his influence was universal.

Now listen closely, Corn Syrup said, you’re gonna put everyone back where they belong, except the chicken. You can’t win this fight, I’m too powerful.

I stepped backward and stammered . . . I’ll, I’ll become a Vegan, yeah, a Vegan—we all will!

Corn Syrup laughed, so I grabbed him around the neck and squeezed hard. Bat-boy came in at that moment and asked why I was squirting syrup onto the ceiling. I told him not to get too close as Corn Syrup was very dangerous. He stepped around me, scooped up some graham cracker crumbs and flew away.

My wife came home quite drunk at 10 p.m. and accosted me in the kitchen about the mess and gave me grief about the kids still being up on a school night. I squirted Corn Syrup on her and left her there to die.