The yellow bus season has begun. This year was a bit rough for me, seeing my little buddy head off. This summer, she has spent more time in the shop and has been a tremendous help. We work well together. Thankfully, this time of year brings about the end of the dry season. This year has been exceptionally dry. Our rotation for the goat pastures was off this year. Usually, once they are moved to a new section, I will mow the old section to knock down what they won't eat and help what they do eat grow back. It was so dry I was afraid I would do more harm mowing.
The days are getting shorter, and the local fair season has begun. We have been dragged to the fairs because we are nothing more than a taxi service now. It has been a struggle for the early bedtime to work out. We have officially become old enough to "people watch." My goodness, there is no better place to take visitors to the sites than a county fair. If a guy who spends every day in bibbed overalls sees something wrong with your outfit, there is an issue. I know that when I see a bull or a pig with a ring in the middle of its nose, it is either rooting too much or a problem. I have been told repeatedly that I am not allowed to ask the nose ring folks if they have a rooting problem. I am not talking about a little speck of something shiny on the side of the nose. I am noticing what appears to be a slightly smaller bull ring hanging between the nostrils. Of course, the rings are always black and seem like a giant wad of nose hair. I can't relay the message that, soon enough, things will grow from your nose that you don't want. When I was younger, the folks who worked at the carnivals were the ones who had the crazy piercings and tattoos covering most of their bodies. Now, the amount of ink has switched. I can't help but wonder if the carnival workers tell each other to be careful with these folks. They seem rough.
I couldn't help but notice the dwindling number of young kids going to the local fairs. Forty-Three. Forty-three is the exact age that I got to before I turned into the "Kids these days" old guy. A few of the ones that were at the fair still really weren't there. They were getting pictures for social media. Fairs were a big deal when I was younger. You were unsupervised as long as you had a friend and checked in on the hour every hour. Now, to specify. The hour meant we arrived five minutes early at the designated meeting point. We stayed at said meeting point until an adult showed up. If the adult never showed up, we waited for the ambulance to rescue us from dehydration and made them promise to write a note about why we were not where we were supposed to be. By unsupervised, I mean that your parents didn't have their own eyes on you. But by God, back then, every parent who knew your family would not hesitate to step in as a parent if you got out of line. That wasn't the worst. You would end up corrected by a friend's parent. Only to have your parents still feel the need to do their duties. Now, heaven forbid that someone should think about raising their voice at a feral child. They are just expressing themselves as individuals, after all. It isn't the fact that the kids thought they were in the right. They weren't embarrassed; they were called on for bad behavior. Real life, not a screen, happened to them, and they were frightened by human interaction.
I can say I feel a bit long in the tooth after having an outing off the farm. The new generation has grown up watching shows about voting off an island and discussing feelings. I miss the days when tennis ball cannons and in-your-face steroid use from a gladiator named Nitro did the talking. The world needs more American Gladiators. Did the buck fifty librarian named Stanely make you think the world was fair when he was roid-raged over by Thunder? Not for all of the long-term injuries that show caused. It gave the little guy hope that one day they will get their ass kicked hard enough they win. It taught me that life isn't fair. Again, keep getting your ass kicked, and just maybe, you will win. Now, a bunch of people go camping and have to have competitions to vote to dwindle the numbers down to one. Why that show doesn't have some muscle-bound morons hunting the contestants down with tennis ball guns is way out of my pay grade.
Swiping Right, Adderall, and Tic Toc have replaced sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll. The only new version of anything that is any good these kids have brought to the table is talking. If my understanding is correct, talking is basically what happens when you are just about dating. A dating engagement that may or may not work out. So far, I think, really, really dumb. So they basically just named something precisely the action that it is. We did the same thing when I was a kid; we talked. We didn't have to call it talking because people weren't complete morons. We didn't wear bike helmets. Our fast food growing up sat under a heat lamp for hours before getting stuck in Styrofoam. We still had the sense not to make up stupid phrases. Talking is possibly the stupidest wording I have ever heard. The good part is when the talking is over. It seems that the words, I am done talking to you is perfect. These two meanings work together perfectly. Our almost dating is done, and the discussion is over. I have been told that it doesn't work that way. I believe more research is needed. I want to give these kids a win, and so far, this is all I have.
We went through the suffering of calling someone's house. You hoped the line wasn't busy and the person you wanted to talk to answered. Nothing was worse for a kid than an adult who just wanted to chat as a form of making a child suffer. It had to be a highlight for adulting. They knew we didn't want to talk. They knew that we had to be polite. They also knew why we called, and after the better part of half an hour of being polite, they could say you just missed them. Adults could pick up any other phone in the house, listen in to entire conversations, and then say, oh, is someone on here as if they just picked up the phone. We heard you sneeze, Barb; we knew you were listening in. It was a game changer when we got our hands on cell phones. We could call directly or shoot off a text if they were busy. Now, it is too much effort to type out a complete phrase. I don't mean replacing are with R. I mean, it is all random letters in their smooshy head gibberish. NGL, it drives me up a wall. We celebrate any form of the word there even being used; even if it is wrong, at least it is a word. EIIIWALIIAW as I always say…
Until next month, stay safe and wash on.
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