Who said I can't play soccer
It was a well known fact around my childhood home that not only was I extraordinarily clumsy but exceeding useless as well. I couldn't seem to master those high skill chores such as shoveling snow or raking leaves. I thought I could do both if perhaps I went about it a little more slowly than the others but inevitably my mother would get that look, mutter something about me being useless and sent me in to make the hot choclate. To tell the truth I am surprised that she trusted me around the stove.
I also stunk at PE which at that time went by the unglamorous name of gym and was a torture to be endured daily. Instead of a glove during softball, I was given a box and told to go stand in the weeds that maybe I could catch a ball that way. In my defense I was once hit square in the eye by a hard ball resulting in a specatular black eye, swollen nose and all the rest and so I had a tendency to flinch. I could do the horse vault, play basketball and the rest. Hey, I had spent eight years in a catholic school that had a gym that was only used for showing the whole school boring catholic movies about the sufferings of the saints or about baseball.
So I went about my bedraggled way thinking I was totally inept and then, miraculously I have found a sport I excell in. PUMPKIN ROLLING. Not only pumpkin rolling but pumpkin shooting and pumpkin piling. I am proud to say that I am the inventor of the head down, butt up through the legs form of rolling that gets the job donein no time AND i can deftly kick a rolling pumpkin into its designated pile. Perhaps if I had had vegetables in High School gym I might have been a star.
I can also juggle 30 pounds of screaming, rocket powered piglet while answering questions, telling kids to get off the fence and telling people that the pig is a pig, isn't dead, or pregnant, and it certainly isn't a boy and yes I do know that I'm wearing pig earrings (as if the earrings had somehow inserted themselves while I wasn't looking. I'm also remarkable at the new game of Let Spotty Dotty (a mama pig) finish the water in the bottle without spilling it all over myself and her. I'm a deft hand at goat unsticking and one of the emus has become remarkably fond of my earring thus creating a new game of stay away from the big bird before it yanks the earrings right out of your ears. I swear, if they had ears, I'd make it a pair of pig earrings of its own. Oh and I am the best pig poop scooper you ever saw, I clean my own pens.
How can anyone, who can do all of that be useless? Dotty likes me. She and I have a good old gossip fest once her handlers are gone for the day and I'm doing duty in the farrowing house. I rub her nose and she tells me all her troubles and then she pulls on my fleece and giggles... or what passes for a giggle in pigdom. She gets that glint in her eye that tells me she's just messing with me and so we play with her food bowl and I let her untie my shoes. She even lets me pick up her babies without making too much of a fuss. One particular baby goat likes to follow me and I'm always returning it to its pen and waiting for the day when it can no longer squeeze through the fencing. In the evening when I'm heading to the car, the turkeys stroll along beside me serenading me but stopping at the margin of the farm. Perhaps I should have been a farmer but I'm guessing that having to do that everyday the joy would soon wear off. Still, it's a sepcial thrill when a pig responds to your voice or you can coax piglets to you so they can suck on your fingers, or the emu makes its weird kind of deep in the throat sound when I come near. Or the baby goat squeezes out of its pen to join you. Even the geese don't seem to be as honky around me anymore. I wonder if that has something to do with me wishing them a good morning and a good evening.
I really do like the farm but am also ready for it to end. Lugging 30 pound piglets about is hard on the back and my bruises now number 32. Luckily the crate has gone to the babies and I can leave my piglets in the pen with their mother. One child today said that they were teenaged piglets and the child was right. Big bruising middle school aged piglets and growing right before my eyes.
I also stunk at PE which at that time went by the unglamorous name of gym and was a torture to be endured daily. Instead of a glove during softball, I was given a box and told to go stand in the weeds that maybe I could catch a ball that way. In my defense I was once hit square in the eye by a hard ball resulting in a specatular black eye, swollen nose and all the rest and so I had a tendency to flinch. I could do the horse vault, play basketball and the rest. Hey, I had spent eight years in a catholic school that had a gym that was only used for showing the whole school boring catholic movies about the sufferings of the saints or about baseball.
So I went about my bedraggled way thinking I was totally inept and then, miraculously I have found a sport I excell in. PUMPKIN ROLLING. Not only pumpkin rolling but pumpkin shooting and pumpkin piling. I am proud to say that I am the inventor of the head down, butt up through the legs form of rolling that gets the job donein no time AND i can deftly kick a rolling pumpkin into its designated pile. Perhaps if I had had vegetables in High School gym I might have been a star.
I can also juggle 30 pounds of screaming, rocket powered piglet while answering questions, telling kids to get off the fence and telling people that the pig is a pig, isn't dead, or pregnant, and it certainly isn't a boy and yes I do know that I'm wearing pig earrings (as if the earrings had somehow inserted themselves while I wasn't looking. I'm also remarkable at the new game of Let Spotty Dotty (a mama pig) finish the water in the bottle without spilling it all over myself and her. I'm a deft hand at goat unsticking and one of the emus has become remarkably fond of my earring thus creating a new game of stay away from the big bird before it yanks the earrings right out of your ears. I swear, if they had ears, I'd make it a pair of pig earrings of its own. Oh and I am the best pig poop scooper you ever saw, I clean my own pens.
How can anyone, who can do all of that be useless? Dotty likes me. She and I have a good old gossip fest once her handlers are gone for the day and I'm doing duty in the farrowing house. I rub her nose and she tells me all her troubles and then she pulls on my fleece and giggles... or what passes for a giggle in pigdom. She gets that glint in her eye that tells me she's just messing with me and so we play with her food bowl and I let her untie my shoes. She even lets me pick up her babies without making too much of a fuss. One particular baby goat likes to follow me and I'm always returning it to its pen and waiting for the day when it can no longer squeeze through the fencing. In the evening when I'm heading to the car, the turkeys stroll along beside me serenading me but stopping at the margin of the farm. Perhaps I should have been a farmer but I'm guessing that having to do that everyday the joy would soon wear off. Still, it's a sepcial thrill when a pig responds to your voice or you can coax piglets to you so they can suck on your fingers, or the emu makes its weird kind of deep in the throat sound when I come near. Or the baby goat squeezes out of its pen to join you. Even the geese don't seem to be as honky around me anymore. I wonder if that has something to do with me wishing them a good morning and a good evening.
I really do like the farm but am also ready for it to end. Lugging 30 pound piglets about is hard on the back and my bruises now number 32. Luckily the crate has gone to the babies and I can leave my piglets in the pen with their mother. One child today said that they were teenaged piglets and the child was right. Big bruising middle school aged piglets and growing right before my eyes.
posted by ---me--- at Thursday, October 19, 2006
1 Comments:
If the Geese aren't as Honky as they used to be, what color are they now, dear?
Signed,
TheSmart-mouthedPeruser
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