Vegetarian vs. Veterinarian

That's my baby sister, Chloe, in the picture above. I've mentioned her before on this blog because, well, she's quite hilarious. In the past, I've told a couple Chloe stories on this here blog so I can later compile them together and embarrass her when she brings her boyfriends around.

This will just be a short story on the importance of vocabulary. Many words may be quite similar in spelling and pronunciation, yet have very different meanings. Chloe learned this important lesson a few days ago.

We were all together as a family at Sonic, enjoying a Sonic Blast. My little brother had just moved out and he was prepping himself for the new college life. Thus, our family discussion was about education. This was when my other little sister, Alexis, brought up that she didn't plan on going to more school if she didn't have to. That she would rather just get married and have babies. Me, being the feminist (slight feminist, I'm not the cray-cray kind) of the family discouraged this and that's when she replied with, "Well, I'll just be a doctor then." Then I laughed and informed her that being a doctor would require quite a few years of extra schooling.

That's when Chloe butted in. She pulled her spoon from her mouth and with a confident air, buried it beneath her cup of whipped cream and M&M swirled ice cream. Then she boldly stated, "Yeah, and to be a vegetarian, I'll have to go to about seven years of school or something like that." We all passed nervous gazes around the table. Then we all started laughing. We couldn't help it.

"Chloe, I think you meant a veterinarian," my mom so kindly informed her.

Chlo's cheeks flushed pink and she giggled at herself, "Oh yeah, that's what I meant. I want to be a veterinarian."

"Yeah, if you mean a vegetarian, you won't be able to come to our house for dinner," my dad stated.

Chloe took this very seriously and in a whiny voice replied, "But I like meat."

I feel like this moment was a milestone is Chloe's life. Better now than later. It might have created a mess if years from now she went to her college adviser to announce she wanted to declare her major in vegetarianism.