Guilt

I was a vegetarian. For seven years. Did I feel healthier? No, not really. Especially since I basically ate a consistent diet of pizza and broccolli, Haagen Daaz and Entenmann's.

I actually eat a lot healthier now.

Why did I become a vegetarian? For two reasons. One, ironically enough, for health (stop laughing). Two, because I wanted to be a good person.

Well, one day, I got tired of trying to be a good person and just decided to test the winds of Fate with two piece fried chicken meal from Roy Roger's.

It was delicious. And the fires of Hell didn't rise up from beneath the oceans and claim me for their own.

So why did I feel so guilty tonight?

Allow me to introduce you to my friends. I mean, dinner.

They're so cute. And I thought they were dead when I bought them on ice at the supermarket. (My husband's told me that he sees all the seafood move, even as they're within their little styrofoam trays covered with plastic.) I don't know why it was easier to believe that the poor things were already dead when I put them in the pot. But lo and behold, after the water warmed up, they started to move.

And I had to leave the scene of the crime.

Funny, I didn't seem to feel so guilty last year while on vacation in South Korea. Allow me to introduce you to Harry, whom we chose and named ourselves.

And this is Poor Harry afterwards:

It's hard to look apologetic with a full belly.

Funny, the things that we choose to feel guilty about. Some might think it such a silly thing. I mean, after all, animals eat other animals in the animal kingdom, pecking order, yada yada yada. I get it. But the silly little things that we feel guilty about are just as varied as our personalities themselves.

Having said that, I think I will end with a lovely quote by Mae West.

"Do bad or feel guilty. The brain can't do two things at once."

Or something like that.