In Fall 2021 I had the chance and seized it to take a great Creative Writing Class at CNM

CNM is a Community College in New Mexico.

A MEATY DANDELION

Inspired by Exercise 41

Peter Rabbit and Adam and Eve (Plot)

 

A Meaty Dandelion

By Diane L. Styma

 

The world had gone topsy-turvey and Mavis was not one to rescue it.

Mavis was so passive, she made a cooked noodle look strong. Mavis was such a rule-follower, she made her autistic friends look like hippies!

 

It started so easily. The mayor of Denver agreed that his people were ill and overweight so he decreed a meat-only diet. Cattle ranchers cheered him, goat herders gave him two thumbs up and most citizens went along for the ride. This meat-only trend began to spread. They quickly outlawed smoking tobacco or weed. Salads were no longer sold. All the vegans moved to Canada. Fruits, vegetables and grains were used to feed the animals, but you could not consume them. Everything people used to eat that wasted water and irrigation now was prohibited.

Mavis’s life was pretty easy. She’d cut her hair boy-short, wore pajamas all day, and petted her favorite cats, Bluey and Geo Washington. She sat in the Casita attached to the house her mom just bought and designed content on her gaming laptop for video games such as furniture and ascetics for the Sims 4. She gave the content away for free, and wandered out of her castle twice a day to get a Dr. Pepper and a piece of bbq chicken her mom had made, or drank an entirely chemical protein shake sort of flavored like chocolate. The Carnivore Diet involves entirely meat and animal products, excluding all other foods fit her lifestyle well because she was thinking she had gained weight last winter. If and when the choices were limited, it just made life easier. Did you know marshmallows were made from bone marrow? She remembered but tried not to think about the hard cold fact that Gelatin, the main ingredient in her melty marshmallows in her chemical hot cocoa were made from boiled cow or pig skin, ligaments, tendons and bones!

The state’s strict adherence to meat only started spreading to the whole USA. At this time, California succeed from the Union, however. Everyone felt better and this diet claimed to aid weight loss, mood issues, and blood sugar regulation, among other health issues. When the edict came down, she had forgotten the two six month periods she herself had gone vegetarian to save the animals and because her mom’s friends convinced her it was healthier. This meat-only lifestyle fit into her ways, to be compliant and fully accepting of rules and systems as they are. Her teeth were no longer soaked with sugar. Since the meat only law came about everyone bragged about the virtual absence of tooth decay, arthritis and any other kind of bone deformity!

The commercials trying to convince people had stopped by now. Streaming television shows were often interrupted by cheerful announcers saying : You deserve to live happy and long lives. Try the Carnivore Lifestyle. Human ancestry peoples ALWAYS at meat and fish! It excludes all other foods, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds.

Its proponents also recommend eliminating or limiting dairy intake to foods that are low in lactose — a sugar found in milk and dairy products — such as butter and hard cheeses.

Health consciousness pointed out that high-carb diets are to blame for today’s high rates of chronic disease.

There was a year that even weight lifter and guru, Shawn Baker, a former American orthopedic doctor, almost ran for President. He is the most well-known proponent of the Carnivore Diet who said you spend 10 minutes grocery shopping now. No wandering down aisles looking for pancake batter, corn –based products like candy or corn flakes, or any cereal, no bread, no bakery. Just meat and as much as you would like. He eats 4 pounds of steak a day!?!

 

The one thing about Mavis was she did not enjoy hypocritical Christians. She really felt everything they talked about was a band-aid for a feel –good mentality.  When she was surfing the web and fell upon this quote, she began to wonder if Denver had become a cult and not health conscious?

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. ² One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. ³ Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. ⁴ Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master^[a] that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. ⁶ The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. ⁷ For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. ⁸ For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.

It was early winter but she went outside. There was the cutest hare, tiny baby like one year old nibbling on a flower. It was a white-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii), also known as the prairie hare and the white jack. Yes, she had Googled it. If you had binoculars, you could see it smile. That verse had said it was okay to eat anything! She was pacing in the garden, thinking about the Bible verse, about salad and about that dandelion. She’d heard her mom ranting years ago, why do I have to pull all these weeds every summer! That was because in the 2000’s, spiritual nutritionists made salads and teas out of dandelions to help their aches. She wondered what a flower tasted like. She had never really thought about it before. So the one late afternoon she actually went outside, she barefooted over to where the rabbit had been, by the front fence and nibbled on a yellow dandelion. Just then the black and white drove by. He skidded and stopped. Two slender cops, who hadn’t tasted a Dunkin Donut in years flew out of the car and arrested her for eating a salad! Her mom did not notice her missing until the weekend. She was reviewing her Ring light security device and saw the cops taking Mavis away. She had seen Mavis bending over to look at something but from the back she did not know her daughter had done a crime.

At the police station, they made it clear. No bail. Arraignment and a hearing would be before a judge no jury. And within the fastest justice system ever, that ran smoother than most people’s digestion nowadays, Mavis was sent to Federal Correctional Institution, Englewood. In these modern days, she was privy to know that Subway PR icon Jared Fogle lived there too. Her dad always visited. He’d have nothing much to say except a nervous giggle with “you know when I was younger, I did nibble on a rose petal once…but that was before all this…” Mavis had feared cops and prison even more, just like her mom. Really fearing back then thinking she’d never DO anything wrong but just fear. Here in prison within a week she was submissive to a top dog long term prisoner. When Mavis got some balls, she did things to get her into solitary. And although it was almost outlawed by now, being alone in a cell for 4 days, she began to rant about the Vegans of the days prior. They said, stop eating cows. She was talking to herself. Well, if you stop raising cows, who will milk them? If you just leave them alone on the ranch, they will either multiply or die. What would you DO with 400-1000 dead cattle? Would we relocate their putrid bodies to Mars? Or move them alive to Asia? They don’t know how to fend for themselves in America, they can’t milk themselves, there is little grassland to forage. How can NOT eating meat suddenly turn to being so cruel and neglectful to cows? She began a plan to save the 1.5 billion cows, yes billion! Upon her release from jail she would become a world-renowned fanatic for eating moderately, meat and vegetables. Who knew she would make a ripple in the world?