Granted, we didn't pet the lobster and give it treats.

And you didn't need to name it, since all lobsters are named "Larry".

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(This particular 8 year-old boy's bout with vegetarianism ended after he realized it would involve eating vegetables.)

I bet that's been at the heart of a lot of failed childhood conversions to a vegetarian diet.

But you're not confronted with the physical reality of it if you're a typical city kid. Or so I'd guess.

Maybe. I don't know. I grew up 10 miles north of Boston, in a small city. There was a dairy farm about a mile up the street, but it was an oddity, even then. Now they board horses and sell mulch and loam. Other than my trips to dad's cousin's farm (which was a dairy farm), I didn't have a country lifestyle. It never bothered me as a kid. It probably is something I think about more now (as in, should I go veg). Of course, even as a toddler I ate lobster and steamers from the time they were offered, so I probably wasn't typical.

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Granted, we didn't pet the lobster and give it treats.

Of course not, silly. Lobsters are for chasing.

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OTOH, the first time I had lobster (I was maybe about 12) I got to pick it out of a tank first. Then when it arrived on my plate I couldn't eat it, as I had seen it alive minutes before.

Hmmm. I guess I got used to the concept of seeing live cows and eating them at a young age, but throw a new animal into the mix and my 'ewww' at eating an animal suddenly emerged.

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It's not the conversion of animals to meat that bugs me (IOW, I can go to the fair and look at the livestock and not be upset that Bossy and Babe will soon be food), it's how they're converted. Which is why I buy organic/free-range, I guess.

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cows are stupid animals that occasionally step on your feet and won't get off, and on rare occasions attack you for no reason.

Dad!

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Of course, even as a toddler I ate lobster and steamers from the time they were offered, so I probably wasn't typical.

I'd say it's typical of East Coast kids -- Chesapeake Bay Crab House was my family's standard kids' treat restaurant when I was growing up, and we'd do crabs/lobsters at home pretty often too. And it's hard to be sentimental about your food when you've boiled it to death and then smashed it with a hammer.

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So they followed her outside, where she grabbed a chicken, stepped on its head and yanked its body up to break the neck.

There were several shocked and no longer excited children....

This is it exactly. I didn't then nor do I now find chickens particularly warm and cuddly. But watching my grandfather snap the chicken's neck, watching the body continue to flap about. . . Creeped my little kid shit right out. Intellectually, I knew that KFC was the result of millions of chicken deaths, but seeing it right out in the open like that was just yowza!

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My sister and her husband had a dairy farm for years. Occasionally they'd keep a calf to raise for meat or stud. Imagine my delight when her kids named one after me.

Have I told you guys the story of my friend's mother, who decided to get an incubator and some eggs for her kindergarten class? The eggs, although incubated, did not hatch, so after the alloted time, she gathered the class around and opened one anyway. There were shrieks and tears.

Then, because she thought there might be a different result, she opened another one.

Wow, I didn't know that about Rebecca Gayheart. Not enough punishment in the world.

Never taken Tai Chi, but there was a woman in my last jiujitsu class who had gotten her black belt in Tai Chi in China. She was a very good martial artist.

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My mother always said chickens had it coming.

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