Thursday, January 17, 2013

"I'm Coming Out There!"

Um, no, you're not.

First off, you weren't invited.

Second, there's no place out here for you to stay. No fancy motels, no motels at all within 40 miles, and our home isn't some free  bed-and-breakfast where you can be catered to just because I know you, or am distantly (or dismally) related to you.

Third, you're the type of people I moved to get away from. Drama queens and kings, manipulative, lazy, foul-mouthed, and useless, you wander through life like it was your own personal stage play, all props provided.

This is a working farm - why should I spend money to feed, warm, and house your nasty azz, while you sit on it and play grande dame or grande master of all you survey - when you've never had a pot nor a window that you've earned on your own?

Yes, my nephew is here, with his 4-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. He was invited. He pitches in, shovels hay and cowshit, and feeds the chickens. When a neighbor needed help with her heater, he was on the roof clearing away the collapsed masonry around her vent pipe - in 20 degree weather, with a snowfall - to make sure that her heater would work and she would not be cold as the freezing temps moved in. His kids - unable to comprehend even the basics of living, working, and surviving without drama - are slowly getting to the point where they can function without thinking that a childish smile, giggle, and coquette will get them anything they want. They are doing things that they never did or could have done back east - too many lowlifes lurking around every corner, too many loudmouthed entitlement mommies shoving their children under everyones' noses, too many people and too few decent choices. They go to Wednesday Kids' Club to learn about Jesus in a non-invasive way. His daughter is on a small-fry basketball team. His son wears cowboy boots and walks around the chickens and cattle like a tiny cowboy.


Every other weekend, for $5, they go to the town theater for 'movie night' and eat pizza with their new friends. His son helped his dad and his uncle take the steer to the butcher. His daughter and I are planning her first vegetable garden. When they first came here, they wouldn't eat vegetables, didn't know what they were, wanted candy and potato chips and junk. Now they are learning from where food comes, and are amazed every day by what they can do. Last week after a particularly heavy snowstorm, the kids went sledding - down a hill about 1/4 of a mile high. Something that 3 months ago they would have been terrified to even look at, much less do; now they are enthusiastic and will do it for hours in 0 degree temps.















A couple of times a month we go down to the local bar/restaurant, where kids are always welcome. We sit with friends and talk about grownup things like weather and cattle, and the kids listen intently, or find their friends and sit and talk. We might drink, or we might not. But there are no staggering drunks, everyone is friendly, everyone stops by for a chat.



No, this is nothing like you are used to and nothing like you think. Types like you would be easily bored, looking for action, looking to start trouble and stir shit, demanding to be the center of attention, trying to find a drug dealer or a cadre of drunks with whom to get loud and play mindless, purposeless games. And that simply isn't happening here. Out here is real life, real emotions, real work, and real rewards. And, quite honestly, you couldn't handle any of it.

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