Daniel Johnson
Art Editor
I enjoy a refreshing beverage just as much as the next man, but sometimes Starbucks just goes too far.
I am always out of my element when I enter Starbucks — I never have truly mastered the ordering technique. I have a vague recollection of listing off sizes, spices and colors for a hodgepodge drink. I figure if I match what I know about cooking and mixing drinks I can survive any Starbucks encounter. “I’d like a sautéed double tall nutmeg twist with no head. Shaken not stirred.”
The girl behind the counter seemed to understand. She looked at me and asked if I wanted soy milk in my “whatever I ordered.” Suddenly my awkwardness left me. I felt like the foreign exchange student who discovers that his new country eats dogs. Soy milk? It was true she planned to put soy in my drink . . . soy! I wondered if James Bond had as much trouble with the Russians.
I did a little research, and soy isn’t even an animal. It’s a vegetable! How do you get milk from a vegetable? When did America become too good for the cow? I’m serious, milking goats is bad enough, I mean it’s a step down in class, but to go full echelons in the food chain to a plant is criminal. What if soy takes over? There are 10 glasses of soy in each Kraft single. Mmmmm! What, are you planning to dip your Oreo in that stuff too?
Now, there are some good reasons for soy: lactose intolerance and, umm, ignorance, I guess. But I do know that if you think drinking soy is helping cows you are completely wrong. Do you think a cow has anything better to do than eat and get milked twice a day? I could only dream of a better life, and you want to take their job away? Do we want to put thousands of cows out of work? You soy milk drinkers want to send these bovine troopers to the unemployment lines and overload America’s already stressed welfare system. You’re sending these cows to the streets with no money to buy soy to feed their calves.
“I’m saving the animals. I’m saving the animals,” they say. Listen, that soy farmer’s contract with Kraft singles is the only thing keeping that animal from the dog food factory.
I support animal products, and the cow deserves attention. I eat meat, drink milk, wear leather and watch rodeos. But by you sipping on a soy foam cappusomething, you certainly aren’t helping — you are directly contributing to the loss of an American tradition. Suddenly the hamburger becomes extinct, there are thousands of cows on the streets turning to crime and prostitution, selling your kids drugs in dark alleys. While others, the honest ones, struggle to make ends meat.
There is a point when enough is enough. I won’t have it. I looked straight at my opponent and all my Starbucks anxiety melted away, replaced with rage for this injustice.
“Would you like soy milk in your drink?” she repeated.
And the moment came.
“You idiot! Do you think that cows can survive in the real world? They have no opposable thumbs! They need their niche . . . it’s all they have” (I was sobbing now) “It’s all they have, darn it!”
I fell to the floor, a wave of emotions came over me and I huddled in a nearby corner, far from the world I knew, very near to a hell that I had come too close to realizing. But I softly reminded myself that I can still get a double-double and a chocolate milkshake with not a hint of soy.
09-23-2004
