I Just Ate A Salad. This Is A Very Big Deal.

I just ate a salad for lunch. This may not seem like a Very Big Deal. People eat salads every day, in many many parts of the world. News segments do not begin, "Man ate salad. Film at 11." You never see "Brittany Spears Eats a Salad!!" splashed across the cover of The National Enquirer.

I, however, have never eaten a salad as a meal, and seldom consume lettuce at all. I spent 26 years of my life avoiding all vegetables, save for corn, raw carrots, and potatoes--hearty, starchy Midwestern fare. One time when we were at my Aunt Helen's for dinner, I was forced to eat three bites of green beans before I could have the Really Cool-Looking Bunny Cookie that my mom brought for dessert. I gagged on the second bite and almost threw up. She gave me the cookie anyway. My vegetable avoidance continued.

But one lunch hour in the winter of 2004, I walked to my favorite cafe deep in thought: I had moved across the country to be with my boyfriend and we were breaking up. My company was closing and I was losing my job. And I had just been robbed by my crack-dealing super who took everything I owned, down to my shower curtain rings. Distracted by inner tumult, I forgot to order my chicken sandwich sans veggies. The guy behind the counter handed me the sandwich. I saw leaves poking out from under the bun, and a trickle of red watery tomato innards oozing out the side, and I contemplated handing it right back. Then I looked at it again. "A tomato," I thought, "is not going to kill me." And I ate it.

And that was the beginning.