How To Deal With Your Friends By VeganGirl, 13 Your friends might be a little shocked by your decision to become a vegetarian. Some of mine were. I was overloaded with hard-to-answer-questions and "problems" with being a vegetarian. How could I deal with all of those questions? I felt like saying "None of your questions are going to make me change my mind about this! Why don't you look them up on the internet, instead of asking me!?". The thing I could not stand the most was that some of there questions didn't seem to make any sense. They looked like they were just trying to make me change my mind about my decision to become a vegetarian. One boy I knew told me that if nobody ate fish, the fish would overpopulate. I knew he wanted me to say something against that (or admit defeat, that he had stumped me), which I did. I ended up saying something that wasn't very convincing, though, to him or me, because I had no idea what to say. Awhile later I brought up the conversation with my mom, and asked her what her opinion was. She thought that if there was a possibility that that could happen, it would most likely happen in the period of over a million years. Besides, she told me, the whole world would never give up eating fish completely. If your friends give you a hard time about being vegetarian, don't feel too badly. If they want to be that way, it's their own choice. But try to talk to them sometime and tell them why you chose to follow a vegetarian diet. Some people think that if you're a vegetarian, you'll try to pressure them to become one, too. It's true that I would like it if some of my friends became vegetarians, but I definitely don't want to pressure them into it. Tell them that you don't want to force them to feel guilty for eating meat and that if they'd feel better with you not talking about being a vegetarian, you will respect their wishes. Also tell them that you'd like it if they'd stop getting down on you for being a vegetarian. Some kids don't realize that you feel like they're getting down on you, so remember that when you talk to them about it. Some kids ask questions because they're curious, not because they're getting down on you. So try to answer they're questions as good as you can. If I wasn't a vegetarian, I'd want to learn more. Wouldn't you? Some kids may think that being vegetarian is cool. Vegetarianism is becoming more popular, so it isn't quite as shocking anymore. Less and less people are exclaiming "you're becoming a WHAT?!". You may be surprised at how many kids you know actually are vegetarians, or eat a mostly vegetarian diet. To read the older version of this article, click Here.