I went to boarding school for high school.

During my junior year, my social circle acquired - and I do mean acquired, because no-one was quite sure how we ended up with her - an obnoxious brat. Highly intelligent (taking junior-level classes as a freshman), but completely lacking in social skills, this girl had a tendency to come in to dinner moaning that she was failing AP Biology (or AP Chemistry, or Calculus), and that she’d only scored an 89 (or a 92, or an A minus) on her last test. To make matters worse, she was a proselytizing vegan, and just to put the cherry on the cake, she acquired a boyfriend and developed a habit of engaging in extended makeout sessions with him in the dining hall… at breakfast.

Let me be blunt: we hated her guts.

One night at dinner, after a round of “woe-is-me-I-only-have-an-A-minus-average in AP French” she was eating chocolate pudding for dessert. The kind of chocolate pudding that wasn’t made from scratch, but a commercial product, either made from mix or sold prepackaged in big tubs to institutional dining facilities.

I looked at her dessert. And I looked at her. And an evil thought crossed my mind.

“I thought you were vegan.”

“I am!”

“But you’re eating chocolate pudding. It’s made with gelatin as thickener. Gelatin comes from boiling animal bones!”

She put down her spoon. A funny look crossed her face, which had taken on a curiously greenish pallor. She clapped a hand over her mouth and bolted in the direction of the restrooms.

It took everything I had to not burst out laughing. You see, the commercial chocolate pudding was dairy-free and thickened with carrageenan, which is derived from seaweed. The dietary disclaimer on the menu by the dessert table had a little (v) for “vegan” next to the listing for pudding. Not my fault she didn’t do her homework.

I called it just desserts.