*photo credit to Glenda.
I Didn’t Go to Schlitterbahn on My Summer Vacation
When I’m asked the question, “What did you do over summer vacation,” I usually answer, “I rode around in a pickup truck.” People tend to say, “Oh, that’s, uh cool,” and then rush on to tell me about their trip to Schlitterbahn. All I’m asking is that you consider that my vacation could be as fascinating and exciting as yours. Then I will be happy to hear about Schlitterbahn.
If you say you live on a farm, people think you wear overalls and share your breakfast with Wilbur the pig. In my experience, farms aren’t inhabited by shy old men who raise adorable, spotless animals. Cow are just not that clean, and pigs don’t get buttermilk baths. Sure, I can tell you inspiring stories about calves being born, but honestly, calving is a big, bloody show with a wet, wobbly finale. Real farmers watch through the pickup window, while they thaw out their fingers from the February frost.
Some people’s summers have one big, memorable event. My summers are a lot of little good, funny, silly, serious events that I bundle up and call summer. For example, one night we got a flat tire on our Mazda Navaho. It was late, I was 6 and cranky, and Mom was in no mood to crawl under the car. Someone passed us and stopped to help. In making introductions my mom said, “You don’t know me but I’m Colleen Hobbs,” to which he replied, “O yeah, I know you. I went to school with your brother Sid.” How’s that for knowing your community?
For some people, the highlight of the summer is the most exciting thing that happened, like seeing a Broadway show or going to the Grand Canyon. The highlights of my summers, or at least the things I remember most clearly, are incidents like this: walking out across the field, inhaler in hand, to bring water to my uncle, who was disking a field. By the time I reach the tractor, the ice has melted. Another high point: being interrupted mid-pie one evening by an urgent call. We all dropped our forks, grabbed our shoes, jumped in a truck (I rode on the back) and went down three miles of red dirt road. The cows were out.
A visitor once asked me, “Aren’t you glad I saved you from that boring farm?” I couldn’t reply. Apparently my idea of a fun vacation isn’t the same as other seventh graders’. We may not have Wilbur, or Babe, but my family’s farm is a working farm where each day’s labor brings a chance to learn and grow. To me, riding in pickups is Schlitterbahn. The details of my summer add up to a larger lesson. You might learn about a person’s character, or how to test the strength of a flooding creek’s current. But every ordinary conversation or posthole can help you learn if you pay attention.
