How Reading Saved Me from Becoming a Vegetarian
When I was three, my mother decided it was high time I learned how to read. She decided to begin homeschooling me, and though I don’t really remember the particulars, I do remember the first book I ever read independently.
The book was entitled Fat Pig, Thin Pig and was not in fact a real book, but rather a bunch of papers, torn out of one of my homeschooling books and folded to look like a tiny book made for a doll. Considering that I was three, and thus basically the size of a doll, it was the perfect size. The premise of the story was that there was a fat pig who always hogged all the food, and, as a result, there was also a thin pig, who should have been more accurately named “starving pig.”
(Now, as a three-year-old, I certainly was not getting any political undertones, but I can only assume now that the author of Fat Pig, Thin Pig was not only warning children against the dangers of greed but was also most likely communicating some sort of scathing criticism about class inequality. I only wish that the author had found a more public venue than a tear-out story in a reading instruction book.)
At the end of the book, the farmer has to decide which pig to eat and chooses Fat Pig because, well, Fat Pig is fat. I like to think Thin Pig does not then gorge himself on the surplus of food but instead shares with Obnoxious Rooster, Chatty Chicken, and Doleful Cow, but if I’m honest, I have no real memory of what happens after Fat Pig is taken to be eaten.
My mother must have explained the moral of the story, and I am sure that—being the good child I was—I attempted to take the moral to heart. But in reflection, I look at this story as more than just a simple moral tale; it was, in fact, the discovery of two very important truths.
I would never have to become a vegetarian.
Reading was fun.
Now, while most children might—and rightly so--become upset by a story about eating fun farm animals, I felt like the author of this story had given me a gift. This story relieved an enormous pressure I felt as a child: bacon came from pigs, and I liked pigs. But now, faced with the story of Fat Pig, I realized I did not need to feel guilty about eating bacon. We only ate greedy farm animals who were mean to their friends. It was okay to eat them. In fact, it was more than okay.
Bacon was justice.
The second, and perhaps more important, truth I discovered was that reading was the most fun a person could have. I could look at a piece of paper and translate the little squiggles into sounds, then words, then meaning. Beyond that, I could actually use those words to go somewhere completely different and still stay in my little wooden chair.
Reading was magic.
Now, I would be lying if I said that this realization gave me a burning passion to instill this love of reading in others and ultimately was the first step in my long path to becoming an educator. No, in fact, Fat Pig, Thin Pig sent me down a very different career path: I was going to become a pig farmer.
Image from Creative Commons. Check out the artist’s other cute animal photographs at https://pixabay.com/users/skeeze-272447/