When I was young we watched a video in science with a block of cheese under a microscope.

It wasn’t cheese at all but a hoard of microscopic maggots holding hands and wriggling to form what looked like a block of cheese.

Block of Cheese

Microscopic maggot tricksters looking like a block of cheese.

I didn’t eat cheese for two years after that and wondered what else in my reality wasn’t real.

I learned that every kind or cheese was actually tiny maggots cha-chaing their days away pretending to be cheese.

I learned that if you had hooves or horns or poultry feet you could pretty much guarantee a heartless existence followed by a tortuous, brutal death.

I learned that if a human could eat it a human would eat it with ketchup and an inalienable sense of entitlement.

(Throw the maggots blocks at these guys!)

I learned Mexicans picked strawberries but couldn’t get a license to drive to and from the fields. I learned the same thing about the help at our favorite restaurant.

I learned most people practice compassion only when it’s convenient.

I learned the more you said about it, the more you started looking like you had hooves yourself, or chicken feet, or unlicensed brown skin.

I learned to eat the maggots and keep my mouth shut.