I am different. I always have been. My parents raised me in a vegetarian lifestyle that made me feel sometimes proud and sometimes frustrated, but always different because of it. Growing up in a small town in Florida, few people cared, or even knew what a vegetarian was.

It was hard during elementary school to explain to people why I never ate the meatloaf surprise or sloppy joes at lunch in the cafeteria. At that time, I barely knew myself. I knew why my parents were vegetarians, and why they wanted their children to follow their lead, but I never really felt like it mattered to me. I only did it simply because, well, it was easier that way. Don’t get me wrong - I grew up always having a passion for animals that most people never realized. When I was young, I began the habit of watching every step I took so that I wouldn’t step on an ant and accidentally kill it. I grew up with the hopes of becoming a veterinarian like so many other children. However, I had this rebellion and curiosity in me that, truthfully, shames me today.

My parents raised us with love and compassion, and we had a great family that many other kids went without. Still, I couldn’t shake the nagging interest in tasting what the forbidden food was like out of my head. My freshman year in high school was a cornucopia of new situations and experiences to wade through. One seemingly unimportant matter that most kids simply glossed over was the introduction of the Chic-Fil-A chicken sandwich at lunch. Eating that sandwich became the “cool” thing to do. Naturally, I wanted to know what it was about a dumb sandwich that had everybody so enraptured. So, one fateful day, I took a bite of my friend’s sandwich….it wasn’t bad. I didn’t think it was good either, but I didn’t think it was bad. I lost interest in the whole idea of eating meat vs. not eating meat, and I just went on with my daily routine of being a vegetarian. But it still didn’t mean much to me.

A few months later, I got a wake up call that I will never forget. I was sitting in Spanish class, and we were having a cultural foods day. The idea was to bring in a dish that represented your culture and share it with the class. One person couldn’t think of anything representative of her culture, so she simply brought in fried chicken. I thought to myself, "I’ve never had fried chicken…and it doesn’t really look too bad, I think I’ll try it." So, I waited in line, stacked my plate full of food, and headed back to my desk.

I was really excited by the prospect of trying a new food and breaking the “law” by doing it. I took a few seconds to stare at it, then slowly, I started to take a bite. Once again, I thought that it wasn’t bad…wasn’t good, but wasn’t bad. Then, I looked down at the chicken wing in my hand. Staring right back at me, in all its climactic fury, was a big, purple vein. I literally threw the chicken down. It missed the plate and landed on the shoe of the person next to me.

Now, I don’t even remember the last time I threw up, or the last time I felt like I might. But I do remember the need to retch was quite powerful that day. In order to avoid that fate, I simply spit the semi-chewed mass of chicken flesh into my nearby drink. Needless to say, the idea of meat and it being fine and dandy to eat vanished from my mind that day. I became a devout vegetarian, constantly searching for ways to do my good vegetarian deeds.

Honestly, though, during high school, I was extremely shy. I wasn’t exactly vocal in my activism, as I now realize I should’ve been. The highlight of expressing my value system was in 10th grade, when there was a little beetle walking around on the floor. I’m sure you can picture it. All the girly girls in class jumping in their chairs and squealing while the boys went around saying, "I'll get it! Let it come near me!"

IT WAS A BEETLE. One of the really cute multicolored shimmery ones at that. Right before some extremely “brave” boy was about to squash the bug into oblivion, my anger and worry for the beetle got the best of me and I yelled out, “Do NOT kill that bug!” The entire class became deathly silent and everybody turned to look at me. Thankfully, nobody killed the bug. While everybody was still looking at me, I got up (quite self-consciously) and walked over to the bug. I scooped him up in my hand, and walked him outside and put him on a plant. The moment I came back inside, my history teacher said to me, chuckling, “You don’t say anything all year, and then when you do, you say that. That’s very interesting.” I’m not entirely sure, but I think that was a compliment in some way.

Moving off to college two states and 400 miles away was a big decision and one I’m still unsure of sometimes. Going to school in the South has meant a huge change for me after growing up in Florida, which contains as much Southern culture as the Midwest. Much more often, I feel the need to defend my vegetarian beliefs against many people who describe themselves as “meat and potato” people. There is a constant pressure from so many people, including my roommate, to ignore my beliefs and “eat the animals that God put here to eat.” I’m sorry, I thought God put animals here to LIVE.

Living here has frustrated me beyond belief. It seems like there is nobody else here that feels the same way about animals. Last week, this frustration turned into anger, which turned into this feeling in the pit of my stomach that was begging me to DO something, instead of just trying to DEAL. I came across a letter to the editor in USA Today. It was about fish and how they feel pain and basically, it was promoting a vegetarian lifestyle.

For some reason, that slapped me right in the face and really got to me. I hung it on my wall and put an excerpt as my away message on instant messenger. Then, I started looking online and I found out that over 8 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S. alone for food purposes, and that absolutely blew my mind. I decided I had to do something about this for sure.

Several ideas flew in and out of my mind. Without a clear goal in mind I began to simply make a flyer on the computer that illustrated my newfound knowledge. Then my twin sister and I came up with the idea of making a lot of copies and then placing them in the mailboxes for those kids living on campus. It’s not much, but it’s a start, and people will have to at least look at it before crumpling it up. That’s it. That’s the goal.

Getting people to look. It’s a start. It’s my start, and I refuse to let it be my finish.

--Danica and her twin sister are vegetarians.