Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I've been tagged!!

Angie tagged me, and I'm supposed to tell 6 things about myself... I've been thinking about this and haven't come up with anything too great, but we'll see how it goes!

1. I've aided in the birth of many, many, many calves. Did you know that it's really nice and warm inside a cow in the wintertime, and really hot in the summertime? TMI? Oops, Sorry! *evil grin*

2. When I was little, somewhere around 6, I managed to ride my bike across some dried cow poo from washing out the manure spreader. I didn't realize it was just crusted over, and my bike fell in, along with myself (it was a small ditch of the stuff, so no risk of drowning for anybody non-family that reads this). It was gross, but it turned my hair CURLY for several days (which I loved!!). And of course Mom loved to show it off and tell the whole story to anybody that came by, which embarrassed me humongously.

3. Sometime later, but I wasn't much older, we were in the process of loading up young heifers* for moving them to another place. I was "guarding" the crack between the end of the horse-cart gate and the barn. In the whole goings-on, they ended up plowing through where I was guarding. I got knocked in the head with the end-gate of the horsecart as it went flying around, which threw me flat on my back - once again, in cow poo!! I'm not sure if it knocked me out, but I remember opening my eyes to see young 300-400lb heifer's hooves and stomachs flying over me and being scared that they were going to not jump high/far enough and trample me. That resulted in a monster goose-egg on my head and a headache, but no curly hair. Rats.
The lesson learned by all was to never stand BEHIND a gate - always on the END of it.

*Heifer = female bovine that has not yet had a calf. After they calve they are called "cows". A male bovine is not a "boy cow". Girl is "cow" (or heifer), boy is "bull", steer is "it", "calves" - baby bovine - general term for anything from birth to 200 - 300 lbs, or whenever you just start calling them heifers or bulls or steers.

4. Around 15 or 16 I learned the hard way that you're not supposed to have your eye up against the rifle scope. I saw stars and had a headache for a couple days (don't worry, I didn't see stars for a couple days - just when it happened), not to mention yet another ugly goose egg.

5. I never learned the proper way to let down a handy-man jack, but I did let one down with a tractor on it (after Dad changed the tire), and successfully got a bruised jaw bone from the jack handle flying up and hitting me. That's the second time I remember seeing stars, and I knew it must be wimpy of me to sob and sob from the pain when I was 17 years old!!

6. Oh yeah - don't forget about the time I fell out of "the bean tree" and it totally knocked me out and knocked the wind out of me. I was still sucking my thumb at night (I think I was 7 or 8), and was embarrassed when Mom or somebody had one of the kids run and get my blanket. Probably embarrassed because we had company visiting and I didn't want to look like a baby. Oh, but it hurt sooooo bad I almost didn't care!!!

Hmm, this has turned into bits and pieces from my school of hard knocks. After all that, I think I still have all my brains and that they function properly. Though I can't remember if it was real or did I dream it that Rascal barked and barked and barked for awhile last night?? Daniel never heard Rascal bark.

I'm supposed to tag 6 people for this, but I don't know 6 bloggers who haven't already been tagged, so I'll just let it go.

2 comments:

Eric said... [Reply to comment]

I think all 6 of these things were TMI!

You've led a very interesting and painful life!

Sally said... [Reply to comment]

6 interesting things! I am still grinning! I remember almost all of those now that you bring them back to my mind. Especially the gate thing. I had forgotten the rule of always standing at the end. I'll have to be sure to teach it to Paul and Hannah.