Emma stopped eating meat when she was seven years old. Two years later, she stopped eating milk and cheese, and three years after that she stopped eating processed food. None of this was for ethical or health reasons. Emma just had bad luck with food.

When she was seven, Emma’s t-ball team was going out for hot dogs, and when she bit into hers, she also bit into a severed pinky finger. (It belonged to one of the workers at the factory where the weiners were made.) As soon as she pulled it out and saw it pointing right back at her, she refused to eat meat ever again.

When Emma was nine she found a gelatinous gob of something icky white on top of the butter, and a little while later there was an incident with chocolate milk that she never talked about. On her tenth birthday she found what she thought was a frog’s eye in her ice cream cone. (It wasn’t actually a frog’s eye, though, it was a completely different animal.) This is when Emma stopped eating dairy.

Finally, when Emma was thirteen, she stopped eating processed food. This was an unusual year, actually, even for her. One time she found a little green worm in a fruit bar, another time a hornet’s nest in a bag of chips. A can of pop she nearly drank out of was full of nails, a donut was actually an angry coiled-up rattlesnake, and she found a paint-soaked sponge in a package that was supposed to be her favourite organic tofu. Who knows how these things happen, but they did, and they happened to Emma.

One day, Emma is going to stop eating most fruits and vegetables, all rice and beans and nuts, and everything except for a specific type of apple that she will grow herself. And then one day, something will happen, and she’ll stop eating even that.

But as Emma always said, don’t go letting her stories stop you from eating what you want. She just had bad luck, is all.