Did you know that you might be a cauliflower, or maybe a tomato, or a pea? It’s true. Keep on reading and I’ll tell you why. (And no, it’s not past life related. But hey, if you want to believe you once roamed this earth as a chubby red vegetable, who am I to judge.)

Still with me? Good, let me start from the beginning.

In the beginning we’re born. Yay! Things could not get a better start.
Immediately after we’re born, we start to grow up. And then we keep growing up, and some day maybe we’ll get kids of our own, and; unless we can figure out how to stop growing up, someday we’ll die. But that’s another story. Let’s back track a bit and focus on one thing that, in most cases, happens when you grow up.

The time when you start to notice boys, or girls, or boys and girls (possibly animals, or pies... Trust me, we do not want to go there).

It often goes something like this:
One day you wake up to find the world infested with boy or girl cooties. Ewww. And the grown-ups are completely useless. They just smile and giggle. Useless. So you muddle along on your own for a year or two before you start to realise that maybe cooties aren’t so bad. Maybe they even can be fun. And then you grow up some more, get a first kiss, get a first boyfriend or girlfriend, maybe get your heart broken for the first time (my condolences). Some people get real, grown-up cooties and has to go see a doctor for pills to get rid of them. Also another story.
Will I ever get to the real story you’re wondering now. What happened to the vegetables from before?
Don’t worry, they’re just around the corner. Unless a salad has been made.

Apart from the heartbreak and grown-up cooties, what I told you just now didn’t sound too bad right? Not too complicated.
And for some people, it isn’t.
But for some people it is. It doesn’t have to be.

For me it wasn’t. I never even had a cootie-phase. I started noticing that boys were cute back in kindergarten. Cute things can’t have cooties. So obviously the rumours of yucky cooties had to be greatly exaggerated. I got my first kiss at 11. My first boyfriend at 12. My first heartbreak also at 12. And so far, no grown-up cooties. (pheww)

A friend of mine had a similar, but different experience. The start of the story is the same. Boys are cute, check. Cooties? What cooties? Check. Here we’ve had the first difference though. My friend didn’t have the same reasons as me as to not worry about boy cooties. You see, my friend is a boy himself.

(WHAT ABOUT THE VEGETABLES!? Sheesh, calm down, I’m getting there.)

Anyways, my friend also had it pretty easy. Boys were cute, excellent. And then he proceeded with the looking, and the hand holding, and the kissing and the rest.

Another friend of mine didn’t have it as easy though. He also figured out that guys are cute. And then he freaked out about it. To be fair, he figured it out first when he was a teenager. Freaking out is uncomfortably common when you’re a teenager, so cut him some slack.

After a while he was done freaking out. Good for him. But that only led to other people freaking out instead. Because they didn't much like the fact that he liked boys. Crap. Which resulted in another round of freaking out for my friend. Double crap.

If you are a wonderful person, or if you’ve lived your entire life in a shoebox, or maybe both, you’re wondering why anyone would feel like they have to freak out about boys liking boys. And why some people freak out about girls liking girls.
I really don’t know why. I didn’t freak about liking boys. Would I have freaked if I’d started to notice that girls were cute instead? I really hope not, and I don’t think so.

For some people it’s a big deal though, and that sucks. Why should it matter if the letter combination in your chromosomes matches the ones belonging to the person you like or not? Do we fall in love with chromosomes?

The definition of someone who is heterosexual is:
“Someone who is sexually attracted to and/or has sex with persons of the opposite sex.”

Sounds like me. Guys are cute, rock on!
But what if it was a guy who looked exactly like a girl? Maybe part from one small (or not) detail regarding the lower regions. He’s still got just the one X chromosome. He’s still a guy. A man. Someone I should be attracted to, right?

But, just because someone likes guys, or girls, does it  mean they like all guys, or girls. Some people like both guys and girls, and live in a world twice as sexy as the rest of us, and unfair as that may be, that still doesn’t mean they’d like to sleep with everyone on the planet.

I could write you a list a mile long of guys I would not want to sleep with. And I don’t think that’s something unique for me. I can also think of quite the few women I’d rather have sex with than some of the guys on that list. I mean, wouldn’t you rather sleep with Megan Fox or Angelina Jolie instead of George W Bush? Or  instead of Hugh Hefner? Or some other guy you wouldn’t find attractive even if you were drunk enough to see pink squirrels dancing foxtrot on the ceiling lamp.
Or the other way around, would you chose Jocelyn Wildenstein (google her...) over Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp?

I expect that some of you would though. And some would rather go for Bush. The guy is married with kids after all. And that just goes to show that some people like different things. It’s like with cauliflower, tomatoes and peas. (VEGETABLES, HERE THEY ARE!)

I really don’t like cauliflower, I love tomatoes, and I mostly feel indifferent about peas. Some people hates tomatoes, and loves both cauliflowers and peas. And every other possible combination. Different things for different people.

Hefner is my cauliflower. I’d much rather kiss and touch a pretty woman than a man whose very face makes my skin crawly. I don’t even want to think about the rest of him.
Does that mean I’m bisexual? The problem with that idea is that I still don’t find women sexually attractive. I don’t care more for peas just because I’d rather have them than cauliflower. Breasts aren’t sexy to me, but being a slimy creep is even less so.

If I have a choice, I’d rather not have the cauliflower nor the peas at all. I’d rather just have tomatoes, and one special tomato in particular, and leave the rest for someone else. And lucky me, no one is making me sleep with anyone I don't want. And no one is stopping me from sleeping with the guy I do want.
Everyone should be able to have that.

No one is going to discriminate against me because I don’t want to have sex with Hefner. And no one is going to discriminate against me because I don’t want to have sex with Angelina Jolie. But some people would get annoyed if I did wanted to sleep with Angelina.
Unless you are Angelina herself, or maybe her husband, I don't see why you have any right to be upset.

Or think of it like this:

I currently think that blue eyes might be the best thing ever. A friend of mine is prepared to write an epic poem about the virtues of brown eyes. Are we fighting because of this? No. And even if we were to start, our mutual friends would lock us up somewhere until we came to our senses again, all the while telling us that wet sponges currently show more signs of intelligence than our brains.

Isn’t it weird how other physical differences can be so important then? Why does it matter if someone thinks breasts are hot? That broad shoulders are sexy? That curvy is more, or less, attractive than straight lines? We all like different things.

Tomatoes, cauliflower and peas. One of them? Two of them? All of them? None of them? Something else?

In the end, at the heart of it all, we don’t love someone because of their hair colour. We don’t love someone because of their breasts, shoulders, or hips. Those things are just things we love because they belong to the person we love. We don’t fall in love with chromosomes, we fall in love with people. Individuals, not strings of DNA and body parts. And what we find attractive is not written in stone.

So don’t freak out if your eyes suddenly get interested in something new. Someone new.

Enjoy it.