Despite a slew of potential pitfalls capable of blindsiding the most ardent of ethical vegans, nonchalant Nashville vegan Kenny Felton breezed through this year's egg-laden, ham-heavy Easter Sunday with his trademark good humor and grace, emerging morally unscathed.
“I don’t know how he does it,” marveled Kenny’s longtime friend, Gavin Beck, a self-described bad, lazy vegan who adopted a plant-based diet two years ago to lower his high cholesterol and help with his little male issue in the bedroom but who regularly lapses on “special” occasions. “I came out of Easter Sunday needing to atone for my sins against animals, the vegan movement, and my own body, whereas Saint Kenny here comes out more vegangelic than ever.”
He shook his head in awe. “Honestly, the only word for it is divine.”
Gavin went on to explain that, on this particular holiday, he succumbed to the temptation of his mother’s non-vegan pineapple upside-down cake (big piece) and his niece’s honey-baked ham (very small piece, more just a bite). “I have to admit, that class-one carcinogen tasted pretty good,” he said, referring to the processed pig meat. “But after seeing those videos that Kenny showed me, I can’t stop thinking about that poor sorry hog.”
He chuckled darkly and added, “And I don’t mean me.”
Another person who experienced a moral mishap on Easter Sunday was Kenny’s vegan friend, Samantha Jones, who, while not partaking of any non-vegan “food” items, felt complicit in animal exploitation when she participated in the Easter egg hunt her family members had organized for her young nieces and nephews.
“I didn’t eat any eggs, or even help hide them,” said Samantha. “But I did deliver them to other people to eat, hurting both their health and, of course, the hens, by perpetuating the subjigation of the feminine reproductive system.” She shook her head shamefully. “I’m trying not to crucify myself over it, so to speak. But never again. I mean that.”
Kenny himself noted that two-plus decades of vegan living have made him adept at anticipating the vegan challenges that might arise at family events, and he does his best not to be caught off guard. His family, too, has a traditional Easter egg hunt for the kids – over which Kenny long ago took dominion, providing hollowed-out wooden eggs handcrafted in his woodshop, which the children paint and he fills with vegan chocolates before the early-morning quest.
“Ain't no thang, and we enjoy it," said Kenny of the fun things he does to to spark vegan awareness amongst the littlefolk. “Plus, i'ts a relief to them to hear that we got nicer food to eat than girl chickens’ private innards." He chuckled. "You know kids, they get a kick out of that gross talk."
According to Kenny, another challenge commonly posed at family events is someone’s inevitable presentation of eggs from the neighbors’ backyard hens who've "got a better life than most kings and queens" and what coudl possibly be wrong with that?
In such siutations, Kenny has learned to respond by remarking, yes, how lucky for those royally treated girl chicks, and then wondering aloud what might have happened to their baby brothers – knowing full well, of course, that egg industry practice is to suffocate or grind up alive those unlucky male chicks, who would never be able to lay eggs.
“That’s my Socratic method in action,” said Kenny. “Just fancy jargon for saying hey, whatcha think about this?”
Despite his efforts not to be caught off vegan guard, however, even Kenny cannot anticipate every possible vegan challenge that might come his way at family gatherings – such as when, at this year’s pre-Easter Good Friday dinner, Kenny’s mother asked him to pass the plate of fish down the table.
In that moment, a true test of his core vegan values, Kenny felt all eyes upon him: would he implicitly condone the mass murder of trillions of marine animals as primary and/or bycatch, along with the overfishing of our taxed ocean waters, by facilitating the distribution of fish flesh, even if just from one end to the other of the dining room table?
Answer: not a chance.
Instead, Kenny summoned all the verbal acuity, wit, and Bibilcal recall available to him, a self-described spiritually-minded heathen. "Now, Mama, you know I’m a different sort of fisherman. I’m a fisher of baby vegans,” he said, casting a fond smile at his eight-year-old godchild, Candace, who, six months prior, had informed her mother – Kenny’s sister – that she didn’t want to keep hurting animals and from now on would eat only “nice food,” like her uncle Kenny.
Kenny’s nonchalant response had the dual effect of both satisfying his devout mama, who would never argue with the Bible, and immensely amusing his young niece.
The sunlight shining down on her flaxen hair, the eight-year-old angel responded, “I know you won’t catch me, Uncle Kenny, because that wouldn’t be vegan. But you can still tuck me in tonight.”
At that, the entire group of family and friends burst into laughter, no one more so than Kenny.
“See everyone, that's how it works," he said proudly. “The student has surpassed the teacher.”
