Tales From the Farm, Part 4: In the Name of Love and Popularity

Well folks, this is it. The last edition of Tales From the Farm. I'm sure you're really disappointed about that ;-) I had fully intended to write about my childhood dog, Pip, in this one....but then I changed my mind and decided to write about some of the unique "challenges" one has to deal with on the farm. Since I'm not writing about Pip, you'll just have to trust me that Pip was A LEGEND. By now, you understand how much crazy went down on our farm. But Pip really upped the ante. I'm sure he's up in canine heaven right now with his wet, stinky, muddy fur, chasing down happy, squealing children and "love-mauling" them. Quite a specimen. Moving on....

In childhood, growing up on a farm is just flat-out fun. I've stated this multiple times. But, as a teenager, things start to get a little tricky. You realize that most other kids didn't grow up like you did and there are times when you feel kind of like a weirdo (which, in my case, is completely accurate). Although I can look back now and get a good laugh at some of the situations I found myself in as a teenager, back then it just wasn't funny....AT. ALL. Allow me to illustrate...

I think it was the summer after my freshman year of high school...so I would have been 15. A girlfriend of mine (my age) and a guy friend of ours (a couple of years older and therefore much cooler) were coming over to pick me up to go to a movie or something. I decided to sit out on our screened-in porch to wait for them. After just a few seconds, I noticed a HORRIFIC stench. I immediately knew it was a dead animal (a well-honed skill from growing up on the farm....impressive, I know) but could not figure out where it was coming from. I went outside and walked around the perimeter of the house, but I didn't see anything. When I went back inside the porch area, however, the smell was noticeably stronger. So, I started looking under and behind all the furniture on the porch but didn't see anything....until I got to a little storage bench that doubled as a seat. There was a suspicious-looking, wadded-up cloth sitting on top of it and it appeared to be moving. When I got up close, I noticed there tiny, white worms crawling on top of it. Some people call those maggots.

I immediately starting freaking out not only because there were maggots....MAGGOTS on our porch, but my friends were going to be there any second and believe me, it was going to be a frosty day in Hades before I was going to let them witness that. I didn't bother to look at what was in the cloth because there was NO WAY I was going to get that close to the maggots. I just needed to get it out of there ASAP. My parents weren't home and my brother was out running around in the woods somewhere with a friend of his, so I was on my own. I decided the only way to get the dead animal off the porch without getting maggots on myself was to drag the entire piece of furniture to the dumpster that was about a tenth of a mile away. And I had to do it FAST.

So, I put on some oven mitts to ensure my skin would never make contact with the maggots and I dragged that bench all the way to the dumpster. Then I ran back to the house as fast as I could to spray air freshener on the porch and perfume on myself. And when my friends showed up, I high-tailed it out to the car before they could even get out. Crisis averted. Barely. Later that night, when I was explaining to my family why the bench was missing, my brother said "Oh yeah, that was a bird that Joey and I shot with my BB gun. I forgot I put it there, sorry." How one forgets where they left their dead animal is beyond me, but then again...I'm not an 11 year old boy.

A few short years later, I met the love of my life (yes, Greg) during the second semester of my sophomore year of college. After the semester ended, I moved back to my mom and dad's house for the summer. Greg lived about an hour away, so we were still able to hang out over the summer. One evening, he was coming over to my mom and dad's house for the first time so I was making sure the house was spotless and that everything looked "normal". After all, we were in a very delicate stage of our relationship. We had been dating for about 6 months, so he knew a lot about me and where/how I grew up, but he hadn't yet experienced the true "crazy" of the farm. Just when I thought the house was acceptable for Greg's viewing, I remembered it.....Kyle the Pig.

Kyle was a concrete statue of a pig that was there to greet visitors at the front door. I could elaborate on why we had such a thing, but really, what's the point? I hated that thing. And don't ask why we named it Kyle, because I have no idea. I begged my parents to move Kyle into the barn so Greg wouldn't see it, but they refused. So I said "Fine, I'll move it myself." They kind of snickered and said "Go ahead", knowing I wouldn't be able to since it was concrete and all. But, folks, where there's a will there's a way. I ROLLED that concrete pig across the yard, all the way to the back of the barn where it couldn't be seen. I was not going to allow my love life to be jeopardized by a concrete pig. End of story. Yes, eventually, Greg was introduced to Kyle and now, after almost 13 years of marriage, he is fully aware of ALL THE CRAZY. I would even say it has rubbed off on him a bit. God bless him.

I have several other stories like these, but the time has come for Tales from the Farm to mosey off into the sunset. It has been fun for me to share these stories with you. I was very blessed to have the childhood I did. And it has been nice to go back there for a while. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :-)

Have a great week!

Brooke