When I was 15-years old, I was friends with a girl named Megan. Actually, I was friends with two girls named Megan, and we called them The Megans, but that's besides the point.
This one girl named Megan became a vegetarian that year. She listened to Good Riddance a lot and got interested in the subject because their lead singer is vegan. But anyway...
She became a vegetarian, which led to her becoming a vegan. And she began reading all these books about the subject and showing me really disgusting and disheartening photos of animals in the slaughterhouse and all that good stuff.
At this age, I was really just looking for who I was. I wanted to believe that everyone fit into cookie cutter molds and that you just had to look around until you found out whether you were "The Funny One" or "The Political One" or "The Musical One" and so one. So I started dressing differently and I really tried to bring in something from everyone I knew.
And at the end of the 9th grade year, I was getting bored with this. I needed a cause, something to get me going and get me fighting, you know? And so... I became a vegetarian. It's kind of sad, saying that I became a vegetarian because I was bored. But that's the truth. Because eating cute little fuzzy cows and feathery chicken doesn't bother me a bit now. It didn't really then. I just spouted out all the rhetoric to seem like I actually had a cause and cared about important things, when the truth was, I was just a stupid 15 year old.
As I was beginning this new found path in life, I had a conversation with my mom.
"Mom, don't you feel bad knowing that you're eating animals?"
"No, I don't. Most animals are bred as food for us. And besides, I don't like to think about the meat once being alive."
"But don't you feel bad thinking about the fact that you're KILLING ANIMALS?"
"What are you talking about? I didn't kill anything."
"Neither did Charles Manson, Mom. Neither did Charles Manson."
At that point, she got frustrated and told me to shut up.
For a year and a half, I was a vegetarian. I ate around the meat that everyone else ate, I ate horribly and completely unhealthily. And then, at the end of the summer of 2000, I said to my mom, "Hey, Mom. Will you go to McDonald's and get me a Big Mac?"
And thus ended my stint with vegetarianism. I've never known anyone else that changed their lifestyle that dramatically just because they were bored. I'd like to hear some stories though, because I'm sure I wasn't the only kid in smalltown America that did something crazy just because I was bored.