Saturday, January 1, 2022

Have you ever literally stepped in shit?


I bought myself one of those day by day calendars for Christmas entitled, "Don't Squat With Your Spurs On" which is 365 daily pages of cowboy wisdom and jokes.

January 1/2/2022 the page is "Life is like a cow pasture. It is very hard to get through it without steeping in some muck." The word "muck" is a nice word for "shit."

I am 76 and remember, as a kid, being on my Grandfather Markham's dairy farm. I was in the cow barn to help with the milking and out in the fields to get the cows for milking. I am very familiar with the cow pies and the need to walk around them.

These childhood memories led me to the realization that my nine children and 15 grandchildren have never experienced this. This is an experience that many people in my generation and prior generations grew up with, the stepping around animal dung.

There is some increasing discussion in popular articles, essays, and books about current generations being raised out of touch with nature. A term has been coined, "Nature Deficit Disorder," NDD, not to be confused with ADD or ADHD. The need and ability to care for live stock is a lost skill and way of life. Now it has been industrialized and far removed from most humans experience in the Western World. There is something lost in this economic and social change.

So the funny observation that life is like a cow pasture might go over the heads of younger generations or even if they appreciate the reference they won't find it as funny as us older folks who have actually, inadvertently, stepped in it.

No comments:

Post a Comment