Nice to meat you

I have always had a volatile relationship with meat. When I was still a very small child I remember "seeing" blood in my campbell's chicken noodle soup chicken bits (I'm sure that I didn't really, but it freaked me out just the same). I still don't eat them to this day. Soup meat is on my unsafe meat list, along with most cold cuts, fried chicken, chicken sandwiches in restaurants, sausage, fatty meat pieces, and canned meats (usually including tuna).

However, the real winning point for vegetarianism happened when I was 14 and my relationship with eating meat was changed forever. One evening while eating dinner at a friends house I made the mistake of grabbing a slice of roast that contained a major artery. The artery provided two purposes; one was to provide the departed cow with nutrients, the other simultaneously provided me with a fear of meat products for the next 4 years, one that still pops up like a bad case of acne to this day.

The problem was that the artery was not a skinny vein that could be dealt with, it was thick at the bottom and branched out like a tree, hogging the whole slice of roast. The shock of seeing something like that in my food sent a reaction that probably doesn't have a medical term but is similar to the 5 steps of grieving (but with a twist):

Denial: Whoa, is that a vein? No, that is an elaborate piece of fat. Shoot, that's a vein. Wait, no, it's something else. Gag.
Anger: Out of the 20 pieces of roast how come I got the freaky piece?! Honestly, anyone else would have been fine with it, but nooo, I'm the one that has to get it. Meat is gross! I hate my life! Gag.
Bargaining: Ok, look, if I turn the piece over maybe we can just forget about it. Yea, that would work, right? I don't want to hate meat, I'll do anything. Gag.
Depression: I probably deserved this to happen. I think I just need to sleep this off. Gag.
Acceptance: Ok, there is a nasty vein in my meat. I have two options; take this like a champ and suck it up, or go without meat indefinitely. Gag. Go without meat indefinitely it is.

Now just add in some hot flashes, a few badly concealed gags that took place under the table (while I pretended to get something out of my purse), and a near miss for passing out and you get the picture.

However, after 4 years I realized that I couldn't go without meat forever and I slowly added it back into my diet. All was going good until last monday when I had a repeat offense, but this time in my steak at Applebee's.

Jarom's parents had offered to take everyone out to eat and it had been decided that Applebee's was the place to go. I was on the fence on whether to order the fiesta lime chicken, or a steak like everyone else. In a moment of peer pressure I opted for the steak. Oh, how I wish I had resisted because what I got was not edible.

When the steaks came they were sizzling, a good sign right? I had ordered mine medium-well and wasn't surprised to find my steak was medium to medium-rare in the center, but that was something I could deal with. What I couldn't deal with was the 2 rubbery veins that remained uncut even though I had cut clear through the rest of my steak with my knife. How does that happen by the way? How can you cut through a whole steak with your knife but not get through the veins? Anyhow, that should have been my red light indicator but I'd dealt with a few measly veins before and I was trying to become tougher about eating meat.

I worked around them, making a Picasso of my steak by cutting random geometrical shapes off places that seemed safe. And then it happened. I cut the back of my steak and found a cluster of veins, a cluster that resembled california freeways running together, a cluster that was the thickness of a pencil. I kid you not.

Hot flash! Slowly I pushed my steak back together to conceal my discovery. Then I leaned my head back and took a few deep breaths so that I wouldn't share my already consumed salad with everyone at the table.

"What's wrong." Jarom asks after I dramatically gag.
"My steak." I gasp.
"What about it?" He questions me again.
"There is a vein." I stage whisper.
"So?" He asks.
"No," I say, "There is a VEIN. Like a big one. Like an artery."

At this point I have everyone at the tables attention.

"Let me see." Jarom says and then pulls my steak apart. Like a bungee cord the other side of the steak snaps across my plate to the one that Jarom has just dragged forward. "It's fat. Just eat around it." He says.
"Are you kidding me?" I ask him. "That is a vein! There is no way I'm going to eat that..."
"Let me see," Kim asks. I hand the steak over and she prods the steak like an expert coroner. "That's definitely a vein."
"What's wrong?" Craig asks. "Did you get the varicose special?"

Hot flash! I lean my head on Jarom and fight the nausea.
"You should make a little R.I.P. stone for him out of your potato skin." Jarom's brother Tyler adds.
"Hey," Jarom says as he picks the steak up and swings it around on the vein, the two pieces swinging wildly like nunchucks. "You can play tetherball with it."
Gag, Hot flash!

"Ok, ok, ok, you guys. Seriously, I'm going to throw up." I say, my eyes watering from the effort of holding my nausea in. I'm starting to perspire. I keep having to take deep breaths and I'm sure I'm going to lose it if I see anyone else playing with my steak.

At this moment the waiter comes over. "How is everything going?" He asks.
"Something is up with my steak." I tell him
"Does it need more cooking?" He asks concerned.
"Well, it's very rare in the center, but mostly there is a gigantic vein running through it."
"I'm so sorry about that." He answers horrified, "we can cook it more and de-vein it for you if you'd like."

Pause. Ok, waiter's tip: If you have to use the word de-vein in any speech to a table in the course of an evening than something is very wrong. NEVER say the word de-vein in a restaurant, that is just nasty.

Un-pause. His helpful suggestion is just too much for me and I lean my head on Jarom and take a few deep breaths. When I finally regain composure I ask him to just remove it from the bill. He takes my steak to show the kitchen crew and gags when I show him my not-so-little vein buddy first.
Meanwhile everyone feels bad for me that I'm only eating the baked potato he leaves and offers me bites of their steak which is about the last thing on earth I'm wanting at the moment.

As we're leaving Craig says "You should have asked him for a body bag, I mean a doggy bag."

A body bag would have been the right thing to request. I guess I'll put the breaks on eating steaks for a while but that experience was close to making me a vegetarian again. That was a near miss for Jarom, because me as a vegetarian would make him a very sad man.