Ex-Vegan to the Next Vegan

I have this friend, who I used to work with. I’ll call her Jenny. Because that’s her name. She’s a really cool individual—musician, photographer, football fan. Basically someone who doesn’t try very hard to impress people, which makes her all the more impressive. At least to me. And, for entirely different reasons, to many of our male co-workers who would sweat her, like, every day.

We sat in adjoining offices so I bore witness unfortunately. It was kind of like—and please forgive this poor choice of a metaphor—watching your neutered dog dry hump a bag of laundry. Sad, futile, but in some ways, also a little entertaining. She wouldn’t so much as swat them away, as ignore their lame advances. Like “do you like comedy shows?” On the daily. (She would totally call bullshit on me, but it is true. I swear to Ba’al. )

Anyway, for the longest time she was a vegan. Ugh. Going out to dinner with a vegan is like dragging a hundred pound boulder everywhere with you: inconvenient and burdensome. I mean, we would go out for dinner and I would behave like a death row prisoner taking down a strip steak and she would eat like those adopted Jolie-Pitt kids before they won the adoption mega-millions: rice, grains, you know, seven helping of potatoes. I felt like her half of the table was like the set of Oliver.

But she was turned back to normalcy about a year ago, and began eating cheese. And that’s when I knew we had her. So we made a dinner plan for next week and her email asked me to choose a place, before adding, “I eat everything nowadays.”

I have to admit, just then I got a little choked up. I did.