The butter conversion (or why God hates margarine)

Still reeling from the snow disappointment of yesterday, I really did not want to get up today. I managed to bribe myself out of bed with the promise of mediocre, lukewarm pancakes for breakfast. The law school cafeteria is a sad little operation - mostly because it seems so reluctant to accept that it's a cafeteria. It tries so hard to reach beyond its function and serve fancy things like herb crusted salmon and creative tofu creations, but it never comes out right. Like how they tried to make the salad bar more interesting by adding a big vat of beets. However, in one respect they consistently get it right - they proudly serve little pats of butter, not margarine with all their breakfast goods. I'm solidly in the butter camp. The sweet, creamy butter can make the fake syrup and blah pancake into an effective self-bribe.

I grew up in a household that didn't seem to care too much one way or the other on the great butter v. margarine debate. Having spent many of his formative years working on his uncle's dairy farm, my Dad was a fan of real butter, but most of the time the "we have no money and kids don't know any better" point of view would win out, so us kids would smear goop from a giant neon-yellow vat of I can't believe its not butter onto our toast.

I probably would have kept right on doing so if my church hadn't intervened. I grew up Mormon, and part of that meant that as a teenager I would semi-voluntarily (guilt can be a powerful tool) head back to the church building on Sunday nights for a special youth "fireside" (basically an informal lecture/lesson/gathering thing). They were usually a pretty mixed bag. The best ones would genuinely dig into some interesting doctrine, inspiring me to really think and feel and know. Occasionally you would end up with someone a little crazy who decided to assault the youth with their crazy theories about how a shape in the ice floes in Alaska proved that Jesus really does exist or something. Most were just moderately interesting regurgataions of the same things I'd been hearing during sunday services for the past 15+ years. 

And then there was the butter fireside. It wasn't advertised as being about butter, it was sold as an extra-special fireside for girls only. One of those "its so important to have a positive body image, but make sure you eat right and exercise so you can be healthy, hot and skinny" things that are commonly thrown at teenage girls. It ended up being an hour long lecture about the evil of margarine and the glory that was real butter. We were introduced to the speaker as a nurse, but you never would have guessed that based on her presentation. On and on she went about good and bad fats in butter and margarine. Margarine was an evil industrial product that would cause cancer and kill puppies while butter would make you shiny and beautiful and support the Norman Rockwell farmers and cows of America. She showed us charts and graphs, and shared various anecdotes and studies. I never knew anyone would hate margarine so much, but I left the night convinced that her family must have been horribly massacred by a rogue tub of margarine. There was no other reasonable explanation for why else someone would feel the need to preach for that long over the morality and cosmic importance of our choice of toast toppings.

I may not have a positive body image or healthy habits like I had been promised, but thanks to that hour trapped with a crazy woman, I am a devoted butter eater. Sure, I went over to the dark side when I had to start buying my own groceries in college and "experimented" with margarine, but even some sweet savings weren't enough to hold my heart for long. I continue to keep my fridge full of butter mostly because I try to avoid an excess of fake food and it tastes so much better, but also because try as I might, I just can't get that crazy woman out of my head. I still think of her almost every time I buy another package of butter. 

Religion always has been and probably always will be a complicated thing for me, and there are many things I was taught at firesides and other similar events that I look at now and freely discount as being false or at least problematic. But I'm a butter convert for life.