In Which We Consider Obnoxious Ways of Asserting Our Beliefs

There is a woman who I used to see at my local dog park all the time.  She has three dogs: two yellow labs and one lab mix.  These dogs are out of control.  Some other dog park regulars that I know would specifically leave when they saw this woman coming because her dogs were so out of control and she makes no effort to pay any attention to them.  What she does instead is she sings a little song.  It goes like this:

"If you like animals,

Please don't eat animals;

Chickens, pigs, cows or fish.

They don't like to be slaughtered

And make an awful dish."

She sings this song over and over and over again extremely loudly, like somebody accidentally put her settings on "Repeat Song."  This makes me want to do a hard restart on her, if you know what I mean.

Once I was unfortunate enough to be on the subway at the same time as her.  It turns out that when she's in a very tight, enclosed space packed with people, she finds it appropriate to be even louder.  She was yelling about veganism and trying to get people to take her flyers.  I wanted to yell back at her that she was not being helpful but I decided that then I wouldn't be helpful, because there would just be two of us yelling in a crowded subway car.  When I got out at the station in my neighborhood, she'd positioned herself by the turnstile to sing her little song and try to hand out flyers.  I've never in my life felt more like spitting in someone's face.

It's not that I'm against veganism or vegetarianism.  I eat meat, all the time, but I often have thoughts of being a vegetarian.  I know that the way animals are currently farmed is cruel, unsafe, and bad for the environment… I just haven't been able to pull the trigger just yet on giving up on meat.  The point is: this woman isn't helping and is being extremely obnoxious, to boot.  And I wonder if she thinks she's helping.  I mean, she must, right?  She's not just loudly espousing her views because she gets her kicks out of being annoying.  But I wonder exactly how she got convinced that this was working.  Did someone once tell her that her song had changed his life, and he would never eat meat again?  Or does she just think that doing what she's doing is better than doing nothing?

In case she's reading this: DOING NOTHING WOULD BE BETTER THAN WHAT YOU'RE DOING.  You make me actively want to eat hamburgers in front of you.  I want to make you watch me slaughter countless chickens. Better yet, I want to toss a bucket of pigs blood onto her, like PETA does to fur-wearers with red paint, or the mean teenagers do to Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

I didn't see her for a long while, and then last week she was leaving the dog run as I was entering.  There's a double gate at the entrance to the run, like an airlock, to prevent dogs from running out.  She was singing her song at me, looking right into my eyes as she opened the outer gate very, very, achingly slowly.  I was staring right back at her, and I think she thought that her song was getting through to me.  I interrupted her, "I'm waiting for you to leave so that I can open this gate."  She looked shocked and confused, stopped her singing, and closed the gate behind her.  I have rarely felt so satisfied.