I am Lauren, and I’m a vegetable-holic.
What did I do to get the object of my desire? I swore off vegetables for 2 weeks and a half.
For many, a vegetable-free diet may seem like a blessing. But not for me.
As a vegetarian, vegetables constitutes a HUGE part of my diet. I’m already restricted from all forms of meat, seafood, and milk (by choice- not because abstaining from dairy is a necessary prerequisite for being accepted as a vegetarian), so further restricting myself from the most important staple in my diet is crazy. Of course there is one and only one exception in which vegetable abstinence is not a symptom of insanity: when it involves something as life altering as a Plasma TV.
If there were other avenues to travel down to reach Plasmania, I would have embraced them openly. Unfortunately, there were no clear ones in my awareness; at least, no legal ones. Money was tight. So I took the next route: un-vegetarianism. Why yes, it would require extreme dedication, and it would demand unprecedented amounts of artificial substitutes. But in the end, I knew it would all be worth it. When my parents witnessed the lengths I would go to achieve my dream, they would surely award me with the emblem of my desire, the great beam beckoning me from television heaven.
The first few days were unbearable. You may think it would be as easy as cake, but even carrot cake has vegetables in it. More food items than the average human realize hold some form of vegetable remains lingering in its life source. I was restricted to fruits, water, breads and other unobvious sources. No potato chips, no tomato sauce, NO NO NO.
But after a while, the lines became hazy. Are tomatoes really a vegetable? How about avocadoes? Cucumbers? ZUCHINI? Things I never thought to think about were now put under huge speculation, magnified 2000x by my vegetable deprivation. These things all have seeds, do they not? Does having seeds qualify you as a fruit? If so, they would be perfectly legal to consume, under the carefully outlined rules of vegetable abstinence. This was a dilemma. When I realized that yes, I actually am debating the qualifications of this here bag of lettuce as a vegetable, and whether I could sneak a few leaves, I knew I was losing it a little.
On the other end of this experiment’s spectrum, I had a crap load of ice cream. I never eat ice cream, you see. Since no vegetables to my knowledge are nuzzled into that creamy goodness, I found ice cream to be an amazing distracter and motivator for staying clean of vegetables.
Before I knew it, 2 weeks had passed. In fact, I had initially planned to go a full 3 weeks at the minimum, or 1 month for a nice even duration. But my parents intervened midway into my third week, worrying about my health, and blah blah blah.
But hey, guess what I got. MY TV MY TV MY TV MY TV.
After living with a black and white, cable incompatible piece of crap, armed with a wire hanger for an antennae, I was about to be enlightened. And yes, this new plasma had elevated me to nirvana. I exist in a new place now. A better place. With crystal clear television viewing. Staying clean was all too worth it. As we walked into that electronics store, I swear I could here the choir bells a-swayin’. Perhaps it was my state of vegetable-deprived delirium. You try and find more dedication and sacrificing skills than that.