I Love Cows

I really do.

I'm not talking about the Chick-fil-A cows either.  (Although, I really do love their chicken salad sandwiches, and I'm a picky eater.)  I love bovines, American domestic beef cattle to be precise.  From the big, burly bulls, to the tiny newborn baby calves.  I love them all.  Even the mean ones.  Actually, I especially love the mean ones because they are the ones that can teach you the most.

I am an Ag teacher.  We are a rare breed of teaching professional.  Ag teachers get to wear boots and jeans to work rather than uncomfortable shoes and dress pants like all the "more serious" teachers.  Ag teachers LOVE to get dirty, and I'm not talking about "Oh, shoot, there's dirt on my pants" type of dirty.  No, I'm talking about the "there is something on me that's slimy, gross, and I'm not really sure where it some from" kind of dirty.  Ag teachers get to teach inside as well as outside.  (Yes, I have a farmer's tan.) 

The fact that I'm an Ag teacher blows my mind when I think about it.  It's surreal when I realize that I get paid to play with animals and kids.  (Yeah, I teach them stuff along the way, but the kids don't realize they're learning.)  What does my job have to do with my love of cows?  Simple.  I teach my kids by training them to train cows.  

Yeah, let that statement sink in a little bit...

My students are mostly foster kids.  Each one has a different story, but they are all wonderful kids who need a second chance.  They need love.  Plain and simple.  They also need something to love.  That's where cows come into the equation.  

  Cows are dumb.  Cows are big.  Cows are forgiving. 

Cows require patience in order to train them.  Patience is something that most of us are lacking in.  People love to talk about patience.  They love to point out when others are lacking in patience.  Sometimes people wish they were more patient, but that's usually when they are so used to getting what they want immediately all the time and actually have to wait for once in their lives. Then there's always the saying, "Patience is a virtue," that always makes me cringe.  (Why IS patience a virtue!?  Why can't "Hurry the heck up!" be a virtue!?  People would be so much more virtuous if that was the case!)  

Anyway, since cattle are dumb, they require patience to train.  The simplest little thing must be done fifty thousand times in the gentlest of ways in order to teach them.  If you're not gentle, they run away.  If you're not willing to teach them fifty thousand times, they will never get it.  I have to train my students with the same gentle repetitiveness in order for them to train the animals.  I have figured cattle out.  They're easy.  People? Not so much.  I'm not too proud to say that I learn just as much as my students do when we are down at the barn working with the cows.

The fact that most cattle are massively large means that a person has to have certain gifts in order to train them.  One, you have to be physically strong.  You have to be able to pull this animal that can get up to 1400 pounds using nothing but a rope and its cooperation. They run you into things like posts and fences.  Your arms and shoulders get tired from pulling on the stupid rope when the animal refuses to move.  Every now and then, the massive animal will step on your foot, and you have to push it off using your puny 150 pounds of pain and adrenaline infused body.  It's work.  It's sweaty, physical work.  I've had rugby practices that were easier than when I was training a steer to lead.   

You also have to have an unusually large amount of trust when working with large animals.  Trust is a foreign thing to most of my students.  Think about it, these kids have been abused/neglected by those who were supposed to love and cherish them.  They learned at a very you age the only person you can trust is yourself, and everyone else is out to get you. That's a very hard thing to break down once it is learned, but you HAVE to trust when working with these animals.  The students have to trust the animal that it's not going to intentionally harm them, even though that might not always be true.  They have to trust themselves in what they are doing, but beyond all of that they have to trust me.  Most of them have never even seen a live cow, must less touched one.  Now, they have to train these beasts, and they have to trust me and my knowledge to get it done.  Every time I think about it, it's humbling.  One of my boys who has worked cattle with me for three years said to a rookie who was complaining, "Hey, she's gonna be tough on you, but she knows what she's talking about.  Just listen to her.  Do what she says.  Oh yeah, and if things go bad, she'll save your life."  Humbling.

My favorite part about cows is how forgiving they are.  I'm not sure if it's because they are just not conscious of your mistakes, or if they have a short term memory, but they seem to masters of forgiveness.  Even if you get finished pulling them around by a rope, poked them in the side with a stick, or put them in a squeeze chute to do Lord knows what to them, they forget it.  A little bit of food, a gentle word, and pet on the head is all it takes for them to be your friend again.  I kinda wish humans would forgive as easily, but then I remember how often those who have committed the offense are willing to give a gentle word and a comforting touch to those they have offended.  It's pretty rare.  

So, that's why I love cows.  They have taught me so much, and it's amazing to see them teach my students the same things that I needed to learn when I was young.   

   

The Day My World Changed

My boyfriend just texted me asking, "Where were you when The Towers fell?"

I just sat at my table in the little cafe where I was working on my computer.

Silent.  

Remembering.

Feeling the ache in my heart.

Wishing that day had never happened.

Knowing that day changed me, the world, and everyone in it.

It was my senior year high school.  I had endured all of the ridicule and exclusion of being an outsider in that tiny East Texas town, and I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I was going to graduate.  I was going to college.  I was going to be an engineer.

 I was going to make a ton of money and never come back.

That was my plan.  That was my world.  That was all I focused on.

Even though I was from the city, I excelled at working with animals and just working hard in general.  It was second nature.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps, my country roots ran deeper than I chose to believe at the time.  Every elective class I had my senior year I filled with some sort of vocational ag class.  I even took welding.  (Yes, I was the only girl in the class.  And, yes, I felt like I had something to prove to this bunch of boys and my fairly chauvenistic ag teacher.)

That morning, that sweaty September morning, I was in the ag shop in coveralls that were too large for me, wearing a welding helmet that hurt my head, and perspiring more than I had ever perspired in my life.  I was welding a deer stand.  Unlike the rest of the class that had teamed-up, I was working by myself.  I don't remember if I had made that decision, or if it just worked-out that way, but I was all alone.  I had just finished building the ladder and was checking it to make sure everything was square when the ag teacher came out of his office.  The class was all juniors and seniors.  There was no need for him to hover over us.  We knew what we were doing, so he rarely came out of his office.  He asked us to all gather around, so we stopped what we were doing and went.  He said, "Something's going on guys.  I don't know what it is, but it's in New York, and it's a big deal.  Wrap everything up."

That was it.

That was all we were told.

So, I followed his instructions.  I put all of my stuff away, took the oversized dirty coveralls off, and waited to go to my next class.  Finally, the bell rang.  As I walked across campus to get to my senior English class, I asked a friend if he knew anything about what was going on.  He said, "Yeah, there was an accident in New York.  A plane flew into The World Trade Center.  You know, those two huge buildings you always
see?"

Yeah, I knew them.  Three short months earlier I had been on an amazing trip with some friends to New York City.  We stayed at Times Square, saw four Broadway shows, went to Ellis Island, climbed the spiral staircase to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and stood on the veiwing deck of one of the Twin Towers.  I bought a I <3 NY t-shirt.  It was a trip of a lifetime.  I took tons of pictures, and a lot of those pictures had The Towers in them.  I felt like I could see the world from that viewing deck.  Nothing but city and sea.  It was awe inspiring.

My English teacher was old school.  She believed in challenging her seniors, and if you didn't pass her class you didn't graduate.  I loved her class.  I loved being challenged, and English was my best subject.  My teacher also had a dry, witty sense of humor that wasn't appreciated by most, but I understood it and loved it.  There was only one computer in her classroom.  As my friend and I walked into her classroom, we saw all of my classmates surrounding that computer as the image of the smoking Towers emerged slowly on the screen.  (That was back in the days of dial-up.  It took such a painfully long time for the image to download.)  The image shocked me, but I didn't really feel a sense of doom or dispair.  I still thought it was an accident, and that's what I thought for the rest of the school day.

Then I drove home.

I turned-off my truck and walked inside to find Mom sitting in the living room directly in front of the TV crying.  My mom doesn't cry.  She's like me.  There's only one set of circumstances that makes us cry: when we are pissed and can't do anything about what has pissed us off.  She looked at me with red eyes and said, "They're jumping.  They have lost all hope, and they're jumping."  Right as she said that, my eyes fixed to the TV screen and watched some small object fly out of the window of the tower that was still standing.  A few minutes later, that tower fell too.  There was nothing but a huge pile of steel and rubble with human beings, innocent Americans, dying in that heap.

Something in me broke.

A sense of vengence welled-up within me.  I had learned from the newscast that some group from Afghanistan claimed to be responsible.  I was about to turn 18.  I decided to fight.  I was going to join the Army and fight.  My plans went out the window that moment.  I stopped caring about money or being a success.  I just wanted to fight.  I wanted to fight for those who weren't able to fight for themselves. I wanted to wear a uniform with an American flag on it, carry an M-16, and fight.

A few years later, I did.

I went to Afghanistan.

And I fought.

And I came back.

And the world had changed.

Many people have forgotten what happened that day, but I will never be one of those people.

I will never forget.

Eleven years later, I still remember 9/11.