Susie Willis (29) loves her food, and loves catching up with friends. So you would expect her to love a good barbecue. But instead, she knows with absolute certainty that she will be vilified by passionate carnivores and omnivores about her food choices.
Saturday's party started like any other. She had a couple of drinks and laughs with her closest friends and a few people she'd never met. But the mood started to change at lunch time, when she pulled out her food from its tupperware container. One of her friend's boyfriends rushed over to ask what she was eating, which was just a little falafel and beetroot dish she whipped up this morning."Would you like some?"
He would not like some falafel. He, like all the others who were starting to gather around her, would like to know whether she will be having any of the meat he had been burning. She politely declined, and it became apparent to everyone that another vegetarian was shoving her lifestyle down their throats.
A rotund man who had been deliberately ingesting smoke and alcohol for the last few hours then became extremely concerned abut how Susie was getting her macronutrients.
She politely let him know that she was concerned about that too, and had seen a nutritionist to make sure she was getting enough of everything. She thanked him for his concern. Without irony, he then told her a joke she'd heard maybe 1500 times:
"Hey how do you know if someone's a vegan? Don't worry they'll tell you HAHAHAHAHAHAHA."
That joke has always baffled Susie.
We then asked if any of this chat ever made her think about just staying home. "To be honest-Yes. Sometimes. I didn't want to talk about it today. I really didn't. But they see what I'm eating and it stirs something up inside them. They get really mad at me. I'm not sure where it comes from. I guess they're just really passionate about strangers getting enough protein."