The Anti-Thanksgiving: My Almost Dinner with a Vegan

Let me first say that I have no qualms with the vegan lifestyle. Everyone has their reasoning for why they eat what they eat and I say, do what you want. With that out of the way, I wanted to share a little story: On Tuesday night of this week, my wife received a phone call informing us that there would be an addition to Thanksgiving dinner. Her sister is a exceptionally good at small talking with anyone. She's really friendly and gives everyone a blank slate. Well it turns out she was talking with a man from her church and casually asked what he was doing for Thanksgiving. He said "nothing" and the short of it was that he was now coming to dinner with her to her parents house. There are only two things missing from that story...to very important details...1) the guy is 75 years old. 2) he's a vegan.* *for those of you unfamiliar with veganism (I made that word up), it's more or less the diet lifestyle that prevents you from eating anything that once had a face or anything that comes from something that once had a face, i.e. eggs, milk, butter, chicken, etc........... So let me get this straight, the one meal a year where the sole reason people get together is to ritualistically slaughter a bird, shove bread up it's @ss and bake it, while everyone gorges themselves on variously mashed tubers and can shaped cranberry paste, we invite a guy that has internal moral conflicts about drinking the milk from a cow. Think about it, if you REALLY wanted to be a vegetarian or a vegan any other time no one would, could, or should hassle you for that decision...but it's THANKSGIVING...eat the damn food and be THANKFUL that you're not sitting alone in your house eating kidney beans and bananas. If you'll indulge my one ignorant vegan question: What does the child of a vegan do when it comes to nutrition and mother's milk? That's consuming food from an animal, right? Then why not cow's milk? butter? TURKEY?!?! None of these questions could be answered, unfortunately, because the guy declined to come. I'm sure he anticipated the questions and gawking, so I can't blame him really. I was prepared to bask in the glow of the awkwardness, however. There's always next year.