Now that I'm a vegetarian I will probably never eat goat. I guess I can live with that. It isn't a big problem. Mary and I have been vegetarians for about eight years and this is the first time it has occured to me that I won't be eating goat.

Every year, I used to go to a folk festival where you could sample all manner of ethnic foods. I kept putting off the Jamaican Curried Goat. The meat chunks swam in a red sauce. They didn't resemble goat. They could have been chunks of anything. Something more palatable than a goat. Their siren bleat called to me.

However, I was never much of a meat eater. What if goat tasted like the venison my father brought home once when I was a kid? Or the squirrel? But what if it didn't? What does goat taste like? Is it worth the chance?

I always found an excuse to avoid the goat. "Curried goat probably won't sit well with Korean Kimchi," I'd tell myself. Next year, I'll have the goat instead. But I never did.

And now I'm a vegetarian.

Life is filled with missed opportunities.