“And that’s what they do at meat farms!” The speaker exclaimed to the auditorium of bright young high school students before him. At the beginning of the presentation, they had been, for the most part, lifeless lumps who couldn’t decide if they were happy to be missing class, or pissed they had to listen to some guy talk to them about food.
He had their attention now, though. He looked out into the dark room with satisfaction at the expressions of disgust and horror he had spawned with his delightfully gruesome, anti-animal processing PowerPoint presentation. After twenty four slides of blood, dismemberment, and general torture of animals, he felt he had sufficiently riled up his youthful audience.
“Knowing what you now know,” he cried out, pausing for dramatic effect, “how do you feel about animal use, for food, for clothing, and for pleasure?” His face turned red with his passion, and the students began shifting in their seats agitatedly.
“Sick!” called out one brave girl.
“Disgusted!” shouted another.
“Good!” returned the speaker. “What we do to animals is sick and disgusting and wrong! You should be angry! Show it! Tell me how angry you are!”
The high schoolers all began to shout and scream, some even standing up to voice their outrage at the animal use industry. The speaker beamed out at the student body, so far satisfied with his work. Glancing to his left, however, he noticed the school’s assistant principal getting very uncomfortable with the raucous behavior occurring in his auditorium. The speaker decided he had better calm down the students before something got out of hand.
“Alright, everybody quiet down!” The speaker corralled the rowdy students, raising his hands to get them to hush up. “It seems that I’ve clearly gotten you all pretty excited about this anti-animal use business. Which is good. That’s what I’m trying to do. So…” he paused, reaching underneath his podium to grab something, “how do you feel,” he pulled out something black that was hard to make out from the audience, “if I put on this leather jacket?!”
The crowd gasped, never anticipating the speaker himself would ever use any animal products. After the momentary shock wore off, the students erupted in a chorus of ‘Boo!’ and ‘Take it off!’
“Yes!” the speaker cried. “Yes, I love it! Shower me with your anger!”
The students redoubled their effort, those who had stood up before were rising again, with others this time as well. The speaker grinned and had to shout into the microphone at the top of his lungs in order to be heard over the riotous audience, completely disregarding the glares of the assistant principal to his left.
“So I’m sure you wouldn’t mind,” he said, reaching under the podium once more, “if I were to eat a nice piece of this…” he revealed a plate, and set it on the podium, “Bacon!”
The students’ reaction was one unparalleled in the history of high school assemblies. Several freshmen in the front row fainted immediately, one poor boy had a nervous breakdown, and it was said later by residents of the houses closest to the school that the sound closely resembled that of a plane, full of screaming goats, crashing at full speed into a chalkboard-making factory. Not until several hours later did the students begin to calm down, despite the best efforts of the staff, led by the assistant principal, to control the chaos faster.
Unfortunately, by that point the speaker had not finished his plate of bacon, and in the fleeting seconds of calm, he let out a barely audible ‘mmm’ of pleasure, which set the students off once more. Even those who had not even heard the small sigh of satisfaction were so engrossed in the passion they were experiencing, they lost control a second time.
It had been dark for quite some time before the auditorium was quiet was quiet once again, the students having tired themselves out by then with their fainting, reviving, shouting, crying, fainting again, and reviving again. The speaker finally stood up from the stool he had been using on the stage behind the podium, put away the jacket and the plate, which was now only covered in a thin layer of congealed grease, raised open arms to the students and smiled.
“Thank you,” he said, sounding quite genuine. “Thank you for being an amazing audience. I do believe my work here is complete. Any questions?”
For a long while, none of the students said anything, still in a daze from the many hours they had spent that day completely out of their minds. The speaker, after waiting for several minutes, shrugged and turned to leave, when one solitary hand from the back of the audience poked out from the sea of faces.
“Ah, yes, what would you like to know?”
The student stood up. “Well, sir, if you’re so anti-animal use, why would you ever wear leather and eat bacon?”
“Excellent question,” the speaker replied, “and thank you for asking it. To be honest, though, I believe you already know the answer. How many of you were mad at what I did today?”
Every hand in the auditorium went up.
“And how many of you think you’re going to change your lifestyle because of it?”
Again, every hand was in the air.
“See my point?” The speaker continued, “By myself, I’ll never be able to change the world. Buf if, by doing doing some things I don’t necessarily believe are right every once in awhile, I can positively impact the lives of the next generation, all of you, that’s a worthy sacrifice. I would rather sacrifice my personal comfort to make the world a better place, then feel good about myself while sitting idly by and watching the rest abuse animals ignorantly. From what you all have shown me today, I believe I did a pretty good job.”
The school applauded. Not in the raucous, uncontrollable way they had before, but in genuine admiration. They realized now that this man was a genius, nay, a hero for the betterment of animals everywhere, and for that they were grateful.
The speaker beamed his gratitude out to the audience, but inwardly grinned wickedly to himself. Another school full of suckers, he thought, I can’t believe they bought that crap. The speaker loved meat, he ate it every day. And now, there was one less school’s worth of kids who wanted it. What idiots, the speaker thought. They can all become vegans if they want, that just leaves more meat for me.