Yesterday, I was part of a group of colleagues entertaining an out-of-town colleague’s client who was visiting New York. The client is vegan, so we tried a highly rated vegan restaurant in Gramercy Park. Not a piece of bread for the table. There is nothing non-vegan about bread. The food was tasteless. There is nothing non-vegan about flavor. There was not enough food in a serving. There is nothing non-vegan about healthy-sized servings. Somehow even the protein sourced from non-animals didn’t fill me up. There is nothing non-vegan about a few extra pounds around the midsection. Maybe I ordered wrong because all I seemed to eat was grass and shrubbery.
Later in the day we took the client to a basketball game. There is nothing non-vegan about popcorn, french fries, onion rings, beer, pretzels and peanuts. Being vegan CAN BE awesome. Imagine being able to say the following: “Sweetie, I had to eat the fries and rings and roasted peanuts, because there was nothing else. What could I do?”
But everyone grabbed all the food I had and left me alone, waiting for some miscellaneous things, like wine and mixed drinks that were ordered. And, I was starving.
I looked to my left. No one I know. I looked to my right. No one I know. I turned around. Uh oh, a colleague on his cell phone. But, wait, I remembered that he doesn’t have such good far-vision. So, the coast was clear. I put on my sunglasses anyway.
I proceeded to order a decidedly, and possibly offensively, un-vegan hot dog and scarfed it down so no one would see. Immediately, I felt terrible about what I had done. Here I was stuffing sausage derived from mystery meat of inhumanely killed animals and we were entertaining someone who has a conscience.
Then I was sure Karma would boomerang and I would be the Lucille Ball character in a “Here’s Lucy” episode where she was at a gallery opening and she started breaking out in hives. Lucy excused herself. Then the spotlights turn on, a curtain is pulled back and there is Lucy behind the prized sculpture, scratching her hives and looking like a deer caught in headlights.
But I wasn’t caught. Except when I got home, I noticed a mustard stain on my jacket . . . .
Karma IS a boomerang.
Other than masterpieces of art (which themselves gain and lose value according to prevailing tastes), I guess things only have the value you give them. 