How do you know when there’s a vegan at your party? They’ll tell you.
I like to hunt and fish. My wife likes to hunt and fish. That’s among the primary reasons we live in Alaska. While I mostly hunt for healthy, additive-free meat in addition to the joy in being outdoors, I do have the odd memento around; a few sets of antlers on the wall, a neatly preserved skull of a javelina I took down on the Mexican border with its nasty teeth displayed, and so forth. We eat what we kill, along with the odd bit of beef, pork, or chicken from the store – and my wife and I both enjoy an adult beverage from time to time.
That’s our choice, that’s our lifestyle, and in our own home, nobody better try to tell us otherwise.
So when I ran across a story about a man who goes by the screen name “spaceneededAITA,” whose houseguest – his stepson’s girlfriend – objected to his eating meat and having the occasional drink in front of her, my sympathies were all with him when he refused to change his lifestyle for her.
Writing on the Reddit page known as AITA (“Am I the a–hole?”), a husband and father shared that his stepson, “Ben,” who is 20, is living with the family “right now during summer break from college.”
About a month ago, the man said, his stepson had asked whether he could move his girlfriend from college into the house for the rest of the summer, “because she is going through a rough time at home.”
Here’s where things started to go south:
“There have been a few issues that have come up since Liv came — pretty much all of which have to do with me,” the man continued.
He said, “First, one of the big reasons Liv wanted to change her living situation is because her parents are alcoholics. Now, I don’t drink every day, but I do have alcohol in the house and I like to imbibe with a meal sometimes or have a few cocktails on weekends. This is triggering for Liv to see a parent drinking with kids around.”
He went on, “Second, Liv is vegan. We eat a lot of meat in our house. Pretty much every meal has a meat involved. I also hunt, so we eat meat that I have harvested, and I have a few mounts on the walls. This makes Liv especially uncomfortable.”
I can only put myself in spaceneededAITA’s shoes; my response at this point would have been, “Well, Liv, that’s too bad, but you’re in my house now. My house, my rules. I’ll never tell you what to eat or drink, but if you’re so sensitive that you are upset by my mounts or the fact that I have a beer every now or then, maybe you should just stay in your room.”
But it got worse.
He said the young couple had three ideas for fixing things around the house.
Their “first suggestion was that if I want to drink, I should do it in private and not around the kids.”
Their next idea, he said, “was to allow Liv to cook vegan meals for us so that we didn’t eat so much meat all the time. She offered to do grocery shopping and meal planning to provide vegan meals for us instead of our usual meals.”
Finally, he went on, “they asked if I could remove the mounts from the walls of the house until they go back to school in six weeks.”
When they finished, the man said, “I asked if it was OK for me to talk now and they said yes. I told them that my answer to all of their suggestions is ‘no.’”
This is the correct answer.
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Again, I’ll put myself in spaceneededAITA’s shoes. My response to this would have been as follows:
“Not only no but hell no. This is my house. This is my home. You are guests here. I will accommodate you to the extent that I would any guest, which means I won’t change any of my habits for you, nor will I alter the surroundings to suit you rather than me. I have arranged my home to suit me. I will decorate as I please, and I will eat and drink what I please. If you want to buy your groceries and do your cooking to suit the two of you, knock yourself out, as long as it 1) does not interfere with our meal preparation, and 2) you do so with the understanding that we will continue to eat as we always have. This is my home, not yours. If you cannot abide by my decisions, there’s the door.”
We regularly have houseguests here; lots of our friends are interested in visiting the Great Land, we have two guest bedrooms for that purpose, and we’ve had some great times with some dear old friends – and some rather newer friends – who have come to visit. While my wife and I are good hosts and strive to ensure our friends enjoy their visits, we don’t change our lifestyle for them, nor would any of our friends expect us to.
This man’s stepson, I will predict, is going to face tough sledding with this “vegan” girlfriend. I can understand, to a certain extent, the alcohol bit; I’ve known people who grew up with one or both alcoholic parents, my very best friend in the world outside of my family struggled with alcoholism and has been dry for almost thirty years now, so I understand the trauma that can come from that. But the “vegan” angle, in which this girl would appear to have a section of tree branch firmly lodged in her posterior, is going to continue to cause friction with the boy’s family. She will likely continue to whine about every family gathering he brings her to until she either dumps him, he dumps her, or she estranges him from his family.
In the meantime, spaceneededAITA has done the right thing. A man’s home is his castle. That’s how I live, that’s how people in general should live; my home is my castle, I am the head of my household, and whatever I say, goes! (As long as it’s OK with my wife.)
