The Aliens Among Us

I am sure that many of you readers out there would be only too happy to believe that I am not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
To you, I stick out my tongue (but in a mature and adult way).
Nonetheless, I have to admit that I DO lack some basic US cultural information on account of living abroad for many years. Expats live in a kind of time warp; their image of their "passport countries" is tied to when they lived there last. For me this would be in the early 1990s which might as well be the Cretaceous Period.
For example, a few years ago I went to a restaurant in the US, a usual, "family-style" place. And when I looked at the menu, there at the bottom was a section entitled "Vegan Choices".
Nowadays, everyone simply breezes over that part and gets to the meat of the menu, but back then, I was thinking, "Vegan?!"
I didn't want to appear intolerant, so I didn't SAY anything to the waiter, but I did look around surreptitiously to see who was eating at that restaurant. Everyone looked like normal people to me.
Having lived abroad for a long time, I knew that I had missed out on a lot of happenings in the US – the whole fixation on "reality TV", for example – but it was a bit of a surprise to see that menus even at ordinary restaurants had items for visitors from Vega. I was relieved that their food did not include me, but I wondered when they had arrived on our planet and why it had not been in the news.
Of course – ha ha – NOW I understand that most people think vegans are not expats from Vega, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions out there that trouble me and cause me to wonder.
Everything we eat has detailed labels on it, important reading that will help you live a healthy life. It's useful to know that your strawberry jam is "Non-Fat" and that your mineral water has "no calories" and is also not "a significant source of fat, saturated fat or trans fat". Who could guess these things without pertinent labeling.
"Organic" is one of those words that I look for on labels. I feel like it means the items are produced with the actual health of the consumer in mind. But even this label is used in ways that I find hard to understand.
The other day, for example, I passed a shop that advertised "organic manicure and pedicure". Say what? What are the workers DOING in there... gnawing at the customers' fingers and toes? Is a manicure a dietary item? I don't even want to THINK about the pedicure.
And then, I was listening to NPR in the car (I am that sophisticated). Nowadays they announce their sponsors in a "non-commercial" sort of way, and the announcer said (I am not making this up), "This program is brought to you by so-and-so company, makers of organic mattresses...."
Organic mattresses?
My impression was that "organic" referred to an environmentally friendly method of farming – you know – without fertilizers or pesticides. So is there a company out there farming mattresses? When did THIS happen? Perhaps the Vegans really did land and are doing this difficult task with their advanced technology?
"Pterosaurish has really gone off the deep end this time," you say?
Well, check this out, organic, eco-vegan mattresses! You see?
It's like this. The Vegans (pronounced "Vaygans") did land, and they have cleverly re-branded themselves as vegans (pronounced "veegans"), and they are changing many businesses to cater to their unique, cultural requirements.
Their diet?
Check!
Vegan clothing?
Check!
Supporting their unique sleeping habits?
And check again!
Who knows where this will stop?
You don't see anything Vegan in Japan, for instance, so they apparently have landed mostly in the good ol' US of A. The danger is that most of them look and act just like Americans, not falling back on their own planet's customs! There is a sprinkling of exceptions – Mitt Romney, for instance – but the way they have been integrated and accepted into our society is remarkable and, if you think about it, a tribute to American tolerance of diversity!