Operation: Enduring Tofu chronicles the saga which began nineteen years ago when I became a vegetarian because I met this cute girl named Robin who was one. I’ve been attempting to contact her as I re-evaluate this decision in my life. You can see how the story unfolded here:


Chapter I: The Legend of Shiny – An Introduction
Chapter II: Acquired Memories
Chapter III: The Celery Stalk
Intermission: a short video (not by me)
Chapter IV: The Name Game
Chapter V: First Contact

Chapter VI – The Call

Getting in touch with Robin Sparkles by phone was much, much more difficult than I thought it would ever be.

Since we last spoke on the phone weeks ago for just a moment, things have been busy for her as well as for me.  Work was busy for both of us. And she was dealing with some unexpected home repairs as well as a busy schedule with her family. I was going to give it about three weeks before contacting her again. After all — I didn’t want to be a nuisance and make this a dreadful experience for her. At least super-dreadful…

I was pleasantly surprised, however, when I received a phone message from her. She was spending the weekend in New York City with a friend of hers, away from her husband and kids.  And this friend was Debbie — another participant of our teen tour nineteen years ago!  The timing was wonderful —  I could talk to both of them and catch up!  I was told to call any time; I left a voicemail message on her cel phone at the beginning of the weekend.

I didn’t get a call back.

But I did get an email at the end of the weekend:

Sorry I missed you yesterday! Deb and I didn’t get back from dinner until after midnight. We had a great weekend and I told her about your project. I think she’d be happy to talk to you too if you’re interested. She thought it sounded like a really interesting project.


I was wondering, I know its not ideal, but since we keep playing phone tag, would it be helpful to get our conversation going through email?

Yikes.  Now, don’t get me wrong — I have no problem with Debbie. She and I had a great time on the trip nearly two decades ago.  But my crush wasn’t on her (although apparently she, too, was a vegetarian). As much as I valued our friendship long ago, she didn’t quite have the same impact on the way I lived my life (or at least what food I ate). I hadn’t been specific about “the project” to Robin, but it would become quite apparent that it was really all about her.

And I was thinking that I might have to resort to just doing this over email.  If we couldn’t get in touch by phone, that might be the only option. I wouldn’t get the instant gratification one would get over the phone. I really wanted the true, knee-jerk reaction once she heard what I had to say, but I guess I would need to give her time to respond.

Or, perhaps, think me creepy enough to not write back.

But all of this changed last week! After playing email tag again, she called! And I was home! She had a good 30 minutes to talk before she was to pick up her kid at a camp activity. We were going to chat!

I began by disclosing what I had meant by the “writing project” I had been working on. I mentioned that I was a blogger with a limited, yet dedicated audience. And that I was writing a series about my recollection of my youth. And that I had a story from our summer in 1989 which I remembered well, and I wanted to see if she remembered it the same way.

And I told her the whole story: “Robin, When I started that summer, meeting 44 other teens with whom I would be spending the next six weeks, I wasn’t yet a vegetarian. I was leaning in that direction because meat wasn’t a huge staple in my life.  But as soon as I saw this one girl and discovered that she was a vegetarian, I realized that it was my calling as well — if only to have something in common with her so she would pay more attention to me.  And that girl was you.

“And although my master plan of having this girl fall madly in love with me that summer didn’t even come close to manifesting itself, we were still friends on the bus. And I remained a vegetarian — so much so, in fact, that when I met the woman I would eventually marry seven years later — an omnivore who loved eating meat — I continued my vegetarianism, not changing for her.

“And you’ve since become part of the folklore of my life, Robin: when people ask why I became a vegetarian, I talk about Robin Sparkles and the summer of 1989.  When the opportunity arises to make fun of me about how easily I was swayed by the women in my life, all anyone has to do is bring up that fateful summer I became a vegetarian.

“And that’s why I wanted to talk with you, Robin. I wanted to make you aware of all of this. Of how I had a major crush on you which has taken me on a unique dietary journey.  And how, throughout all this time, you’ve been a part of my life in this manner.”

“So — any initial thoughts?”

And there was a long, long pause.

To be continued…

Operation: Enduring Tofu is my ongoing saga discussing my emergence into vegetarianism — but mostly my journey to find the person responsible for my vegetarian lifestyle nearly two decades ago.   If you’d like to catch up, you can do so by reading:

Chapter I: The Legend of Shiny – An Introduction
Chapter II: Acquired Memories
Chapter III: The Celery Stalk
Intermission: a short video (not by me)
Chapter IV: The Name Game

Chapter V – First Contact

A few weeks had passed since I left that voicemail message on the voicemail which, as far as I could guess, belonged to the Sparkles household. And by that, I mean the parents of Robin, the 30-something woman with whom I was trying to connect after almost twenty years.  I was contemplating calling back exactly one month later and trying to get a live person. You know — so I could realize rejection in person rather than not knowing due to unanswered messages.

I didn’t have to wait. however. Because I received this email* before the month was up:

Hi Shiny.

I got your message from my mother last week. 

Very funny timing.  I was hanging out with *another participant from the trip* 
and we were reminiscing about *the summer trip* and your name came up.  Hope 
you are well.

And thenshe told me a little about her life, her professional career (which is rather impressive!), her family (married for almost a decade, two kids), and life in general. Contact had been made!

My phone call had worked. 🙂

I wrote her back.  I talked about my life a bit. I talked about the folks with whom I had kept in touch for a few years, eventually letting the relationships fade over the years.  And then I moved the discussion to the topic at hand.

Well, no. Not really. This was something I specifically wanted to do over the phone. So I wrote the following:

I have a favor to ask of you, actually -- one which was the main reason I 
set out to find you in the first place:  I've been been doing a bit of writing 
as a hobby recently.  And I'm writing an article about shared experiences 
and selective memory. (It's not an academic paper; it's more of an informal, 
freelance human interest piece.)  Do you think you and I could schedule a 
time to talk on the phone so I can get some of your recollections of the 
summer we were on *the summer program we were on*? Please let me know 
if this is something we might be able to arrange.

I mean, I didn’t say specifically it was a blog. And who could blame me? Bloggers are weird and creepy and stuff. Trust me — I’ve met some of them. And I didn’t delve into the whole topic of vegetarianism.  But that can wait for the phone call — if she were to agree to it.

We exchanged some more emails — and she gave me her number! Her schedule with work and travel, however, is extremely busy; she was out of the country this past weekend.  But she said I could call her…

… which I did this evening.

Unfortunately, she had a last-minute work thing, so we couldn’t speak for much more than a minute.  But we agreed to talk again next week.  She sounds exactly the same, and she mentioned the same about me. It was exciting for a good 85 seconds of telephone conversation!

We’ll see what the next conversation brings. Until next time…

This is an ongoing saga of my quest — to explore the origins of my vegetarianism, to find the catalyst for a decision I made in high school, and to possibly go back to eating meat. If you’d like to catch up, you can do so by reading:

Chapter I: The Legend of Shiny – An Introduction
Chapter II: Acquired Memories
Chapter III: The Celery Stalk
Intermission: a short video (not by me)

Chapter IV – The Name Game

I had just heard a radio interview with the guy who created the movie titled Google Me! a few days ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise, a guy named Jim Killeen decided to Google his own name to find the other Jim Killeens of the world. He meets many of them from different parts of the world, and eventually gets them all together in Killeen, TX. (Come on — where else would it be?) Apparently it’s quite a witty little film.

My goal here was not to find as many people with Robin’s name as possible. In fact, I was doing the opposite of what Jim Killeen set out to do: I wanted to find specifically one Robin.

The problem was this: Robin’s last name isn’t that unique. In fact, her last name (which might not be her last name any longer!) can also be used as a different noun. Which makes Google searching even trickier. So — even trying to find the correct Robin Sparkles* was much trickier than it seemed.

* (Okay. Her name isn’t really Robin Sparkles. But I sure as hell am not going to use her real last name — especially since it’s someone I’ve been trying to track down for what could be considered less than normal circumstances. I chose the surname “Sparkles” not because this specific Robin was a teen pop singer in Canada in the 80s, but rather because the name fits the part-of-speech profile.)

So — I started my Google search the same way anyone would: “Robin Sparkles” with the quotation marks.

Her website was the first hit that came up! I was amazed. She really had quite a bit of technical savvy! Her website was created in Flash. Flash! And her credentials in multimedia production were astonishing! Why — she had done a lot of work abroad!

Wait — it mentioned that she went to college in Leeds. My Robin Sparkles went to school in New York.

And — this Robin Sparkles was a guy.

Oh well; back to square one…

The next Robin Sparkles on the list is, in fact, female. There’s even a picture! She’s a graduate coordinator for an Ivy League school. Plausible? Perhaps. Until I saw her scarf. There’d be no way my Robin Sparkles would put that on in public…

Moving right along — Robin Sparkles has a MySpace page! A music page, in fact! Oh, wait. Yet another guy. And his English isn’t very good. The Robin I knew was very proficient in the language, having been on the editorial staff of her student newspaper. You see what kind of things I retain over 19 years?

The next several entries were conjunctions of “Round” and “Robin Sparkles.” The notion of “Round Robin Sparkles” apparently has hit the home crafts market niche with a vengeance. Which I support fully. Especially because it made it easier to comb through this stack.

It took me a while to discover that people overuse the phrase “round robin” a whole lot. I mean, there were pages upon pages upon pages mentioning that phrase. Perhaps I’m just late to the game?

Oh — and references to birthday parties at “Red Robin. Sparkles were adorning…” and such sentences. And this is when I learned one of the more important rules of Google searching: Anything past page 4 is usually really a stretch.

I decided to narrow it down a bit — and search on her name and the town in which she grew up. I found a page recognizing her role in her high school newspaper where she was the managing editor. Bingo! At least I knew that she was somewhere on the net! But that was a dead end. I thought I had something else — a MySpace page popped into the results. But it turned out to be someone from her town who loved sparkles and the movie “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”

Oh – and what’s up with all of the running information on the web? I found someone with Robin’s name who participated in a local “Race for Hope” 5K event in 2006! That sounded promising — until I read her age and surmised that this Robin Sparkles was about 25 years too old.

Facebook. Friendster. LinkedIn. All of them have plenty of Robin Sparkles out there, but none of them appeared to be mine. Again, what are the odds that her name was still Sparkles, anyway? Was I on a wild goose chase?

I decided to go a different route: I had her home address from 1990. I used some net resources to find that the last time that house was sold was 1988 — before I had met her. A white pages search showed that, at least relatively recently, Mr. and Mrs. Sparkles still lived there. And there was a phone number!

Last night I left the most awkward message ever on their voicemail (which only announced the phone number — not the people who own it). It said who I was, that I wanted to get in touch with Robin (and how I knew her), and offered both my name and email address. So now I wait for a phone call — one which may or may not come.

If it doesn’t, I’ll switch to plan B.

Oh — and their house has a pool. How creepy am I now? 🙂

This is simply an intermission for my not-so-regular series where I will be exploring the shallow origins not only of my vegetarianism, but my journey to follow up nineteen years later and re-evaluate whether or not I should continue being one. If you’d like to catch up, you can do so by reading:

Chapter I: The Legend of Shiny – An Introduction
Chapter II: Acquired Memories
Chapter III: The Celery Stalk

Today is just a reminder that I’ll be restarting this series quite soon — and, along with it, my quest for Robin, the girl I pretty much became vegetarian for nineteen summers ago. Exciting, no?

A few days ago I included a video clip from an amazing film called Wet Hot American Summer. Released in 2001 as a project from former members of The State and Stella David Wain and Michael Showalter, the movie parodies summer camp movies of the 1980s in a smart, sassy way on the opposite side of the scale from the Scary Movie series. The film stars, among many others, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Michael Ian Black, Ken Marino, Bradley Cooper, Molly Shannon, Marguerite Moreau and, in possibly his best film role ever, Christopher Meloni as the Vietnam vet turned camp chef.

It’s a brilliant film which is incredibly crude and inappropriate, but in a smart way. The deleted scenes reel shows quite a few takes that didn’t make it in because the material was just too raw and involved the child actors portraying real campers. The following video is a two-scene montage which depicts exactly that.  It answers a question likely asked of all camp kitchen staff by the annoying vegan kid who won’t eat the burgers at the camp cookout, and Chris Meloni speaks for cooks everywhere who grin, bear it, and serve the kids with love and affection.

(NSFW for language.)

Have a wonderful Friday. For those of you who are traveling, travel safely. Looking forward to meeting some of you on Saturday! And remember to eat the @$^&! corn!

Chapter III: The Celery Stalk

This is part three in my series about the origins of my vegetarianism nineteen years ago — and my thoughts about the events which led to it. Feel free to read part one and part two first.

You’ve read about the “legend.”  The story I like to tell everyone about how I decided to become a vegetarian for the attention of a girl when I was seventeen.

You’ve also read more of the background: What caused me to do this?  Was it bound to happen anyway? When will this madness end?

And why am I bringing it up now?

Here’s why:

A few weeks back I was cleaning out the closet of my childhood. I found many, many different things (and blogged about it and the impact they made on me).  Something which I had mentioned were the countless letters I had from the late 1980s and early ’90s.  This was an era immediately before I entered the internet age. (Or, at the very least, and age of Internet where I could communicate with my youth group and school friends.) There was a whole bunch of mail — some of which was typically emotional of us as teenagers, some of which was just plain silly. There were letters way above my comprehension level, and letters which you could tell were written simply because of obligation.  Some were written on beautiful stationery; some were written on the back of a piece of used notebook paper.

I also kept the envelopes.  It’s amazing how unique they were — often decorated. Colorful. Stickers and stuff. And how they would address me — whether using my real name or just “Shiny.”  It was quite the personalized experience — something to you usually don’t see when someone sends you email. Or a Facebook message.  Or an IM.

I re-read some of Robin’s letters. She talked about her life — about her college search, about the people from our group with whom she was in touch. We’d reminisce.  We’d make plans if we were in the same geographic area. She was a good friend — and it was plainly obvious from re-reading them that I was way more into her than she was into me.  Even so — she was great at corresponding. Our contact fizzled out around the beginning of college when we had other things to do.

And since then I’ve moved on. I’ve grown into the person I am today. I’ve established new relationships — especially one with my best friend over the past twelve years which has given me a roommate for life and a five year-old hyperactive yet cute child.  We have our ups and downs, but we’re very happy.  Even though we’re a “mixed marriage” — in that I’m an herbivore and she’s an omnivore.

In fact, we were recently profiled by our local Jewish newspaper which was doing a story about “mixed marriages” such as ours. It was interesting to see that our household was not alone. (We already knew that, in fact — my parents, too, had a mixed marriage similar to ours.)  The story was a cute piece that made me think more about that decision.

And that, coupled with the re-emergence of the letters that I had from Robin, made me curious about something: I had these specific memories which defined who I was and what I would eat.  What was her take on this? Did my vegetarianism ever reach her radar? How about my high school crush? (Yeah. Let’s call it what it is.) How did being a vegetarian work out for her?

Is she still a vegetarian?

If I never discover these answers — that’s fine.  I have enough control over my own life to make my own decisions about being a vegetarian. But it would be interesting to find out what happened from a different vantage point.  So I came to a decision:

I’m going to try to find Robin.

And when I do, I’m going to tell her this story. The story of how I became a vegetarian because of her.

And if she doesn’t hang up on me immediately — I’m going to ask for her reaction.

I won’t use unconventional methods to find her. And if I’m told, at any point of the journey, to back off — I will.  Inasmuch as this had ben coined by one of my friends (somewhat jokingly) as a “celery stalk,”  I don’t want to make this an uncomfortable experience. And you know what? I doubt it will be. Robin had a great sense of humor nineteen years ago, and I have no doubts that she does now as well.

Let the detective work begin…

Chapter II: Acquired Memories

So — you’ve read the first part of this little series: Why I became a vegetarian. It was the short version. The proverbial “quick and dirty.” A compact anecdote which has been told numerous times to many, many people throughout the past two decades. When I become a famous movie / television / viral video star, my IMdB “trivia” page will have this story on it.

But how accurate is it?

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not a pathological liar or anything. This is the story as I remember it. But it was nearly nineteen years ago when it happened. And I was a seventeen year-old spending lots of time crammed in a bus with a bunch of forty-five other teens my age (thirty-three of whom were girls. It was a wonderful trip!). It’s safe to say that I was a different person back then — or at least at a very different stage in my life. I saw things from a very different vantage point.

Here’s a bit of background to frame the story a bit. (Again — this is me looking back at my experiences from the eyes of thirty-five year old Shiny. Just something to keep in mind…)

* I grew up without having meat be a huge staple of my diet. This was because we simply didn’t eat as much meat or poultry at home as some other families did — our family kept kosher, and kosher meat is more expensive. Chicken was never my favorite, but we would have it more often than meat. I remember liking hot dogs, but not hamburgers as much. Oh — and I also liked the pre-made, frozen chicken pot-pies on occassion. It was also a way for my parents to sneak more vegetables into me.

* Keeping kosher also meant a separation between dairy products and meat/poultry. This affected me on one major level: ice cream. There would have to be a waiting period between dinner and dessert should the dinner be meat-related and the dessert dairy. If you’ve ever seen me, you’ll notice that (tragically) I haven’t been one to pass up on desserts. (This has changed slightly recently.)

* I had become vegetarian for a girl once before. Kind of. Her name was Eva, and I met her in seventh grade. She was this funky, new wave girl who was the new kid in class. But that only lasted for about three weeks. And when this latter bout of vegetarianism started during the summer before my senior year of high school, I had dismissed that as just something I did at age 12. You see? Different vantage points. Yet history repeated itself…

* My brother became a vegetarian when I was in ninth grade — but with a far cooler story, He had spent a few months at a kibbutz in Israel where his job was inoculating turkeys which would later be slaughtered for food. I guess it took a toll on him. But keep in mind that keeping kosher had been and still is a very important part of his life as well. He married a vegetarian, by the way. And I’m pretty sure that his three daughters are — albeit they gave them all the choice to eat meat.

* Speaking of vegetarian parents — My mom was soon after my brother did it. I’ve always admired my mom and my brother in their wacky endeavors because I’ve always thought they were smart. That could have been part of it — an excuse to imitate someone who is smart. I thought Robin was smart as well…

* Although I’m a vegetarian, I’m not a proselytizing vegetarian. Meat just isn’t my thing. And it’s absolutely fine if others eat meat. Case in point: my wife, socKs. Perhaps it’s because I like being different. And I’m an attention-craving drama queen.

* I suppose this is good a time as any to tell you all how much I despise PETA.

* I haven’t totrally abstained from meat / poultry / fish for the past nineteen years. Barring anything I’ve eaten which may have objectionable ingredients of which I’m unaware (although I do my best to check), I’ve eaten fish on occasion. Example: I was invited to a dinner in my honor and I neglected to tell the hosts explicitly that I didn’t eat fish. I wasn’t about to embarrass my gracious hosts.

* Oh — and there’s “the bet” socKs and I had a while back. She didn’t think I could eat an entire turkey sandwich one day. She was so confident that she agreed to be a vegetarian for an full month if I did. She chose February.

So — what do all of these supporting tidbits of information prove? I think you can gather a few things from them: (a) I can be a shallow, boorish individual who (b) is also a huge drama queen and (c) is arguably vegetarian for all the wrong reasons. But it also demonstrates that (d) an anecdote made up of memories can’t paint a full picture without the context surrounding it. I don’t think I can be entirely precise about what was going through my mind at the time — nor the way I portrayed my interactions with Robin at the time. It would be interesting to revisit the situation which, in a way, has shaped the way I live my life (or, the very least, the things I eat as I shape my life).

And I’m going to try to do exactly that.

Chapter I: The Legend of Shiny – An Introduction

So, Shiny — how did you become a vegetarian?

Well, it was the summer of 1989. I was a rising senior in high school. I was about to embark on a teen trip across the country associated with the Jewish youth group with which I was involved. By that time I had tried being a vegetarian before — in fact, my family didn’t really eat that much meat anyway. But I didn’t consider myself a vegetarian at that time.

And then I met Robin.

Robin was a kid on my trip. Beautiful. Stunning. She seemed so grown up for someone who was a year younger than me. And so smart. So friendly. She and I shared a love for the musical Chess which was written by members of Abba and which spawned that One Night In Bangkok song. I was smitten.

Robin was a vegetarian.

Look, I thought: Robin’s smart. She must know what she’s doing. I’m practically a vegetarian anyway! Meat has never been such a huge staple for me. Besides — it’s only just about a step further from keeping kosher, so it’s not a total lifestyle change.

And it would mean that Robin and I would have that in common! There was my “in!”

So I became a vegetarian in June of 1989. And I let her know about it. She smiled. We were both vegetarians. I was sure this meant that we would be together.

We weren’t. She was nice enough not to explicitly say “let’s just be friends,” but it was obvious. Yet I stayed a vegetarian.

The kicker? In October I will have been married to my wife, an avid meat-eater, for ten years. Yet I’m still holding to my vegetarian ways nineteen years after meeting Robin.

Odd, huh?

And now — to make that song run through your heads nonstop for the next few hours…