Dear Lyla,
It may seem that you spend an inordinate of your day in time-out: I suppose that to a five year old it might certainly appear that way. Although you lament quite dramatically that you must be truly bad as evidenced by your frequent trips to the time-out chair, I offer an alternate theory; mischievous behavior is hardwired into your DNA. Little one you are headstrong, stubborn and tenacious to be sure; but you come by those characteristics honestly. I remember when I was in my teens, after having just been admonished for doing something inappropriate, accusing my father of being incapable of relating to me since I had never once in my life heard a story about any missteps that he had taken as a juvenile. In my angst ridden adolescent mind; my father came out of the womb already a sage old man incapable of misguided behavior. However, to my delight your Bumpa regaled me with a tale of his misdeeds as a youngster; to this day I believe it was the only way he knew how to articulate his humanness in a manner which I could comprehend. When Bumpa was a teenager he did not attend the local high school in his home town, he attended a boy’s agricultural school about an hour away in Morris, MN. All of the boys had chores during the week in addition to their studies as a working farm was an integral element to the school. Grandma Jo says that Bumpa had intended to study animal husbandry after high school (which is why he went to this boy’s school to begin with) but moved to the west coast to work on the natural gas pipeline after graduation instead. The school that Bumpa went to as a boy is now known as University of Minnesota Morris and it was during his senior year of high school that the inaugural freshman class of the university arrived on campus. Rules were more strict back then and being out past curfew or smoking in the men’s lavatory could earn the offender a variety of punishments; but none so dreaded as milker cleaning duty. Several heads of dairy cows were also residents of the campus and their milk was consumed by the students and made into various other products as a means of creating an income for the institution. Back then the elaborate systems used to milk the cows regularly had to be cleaned by hand; the task was long, arduous and reserved as punishment for the boys convicted of committing the most serious of infractions. To hear Bumpa tell it, he rarely got into trouble; as a matter of fact he was well respected by the instructors and the dairy foreman and enjoyed working in the barns. However during the last month of his senior year, he and his buddies decided they wanted to pull off a campus prank so legendary that folks would talk about it long after they had departed. One night Bumpa and his partners in crime led a cow from the milking stall to the front steps of the main class building and urged the cow to the top of the steps. It is important to note that, while cows can walk down hills and short steps, they are not inclined to do so. A bovine’s field of vision is such that walking down stairs is not something that a cow does eagerly or willingly. The next morning there was somewhat of an uproar outside the hall where the cow had patiently spent the night as it took several individuals and some quickly fashioned ramps to remove the animal from the porch and return her to the stall. Bumpa’s glory in having pulled off such a prank was short lived as one of his accomplices caved and confessed. Bumpa and the others were sentenced to cleaning milkers daily for the remainder of the semester; he and the others wore the punishment like a badge of honor, proof that they had pulled off the prank to end all pranks. It seems little one that in agriculture schools this particular brand of shenanigans is not rare; there are dozens of urban legends and myths about cows being led up stairs into strange places. To this day I am not quite sure if Bumpa’s story is fact or fiction. What I do know is the story was Bumpa’s way to express that, while he could not begin to understand the maelstrom of emotions that are the hallmark of female adolescence, he loved me enough to make me accountable for my actions. That is what a good parent does little one; they give you freedom to make mistakes, the character to atone for them and the wisdom to learn from experience.
Letters To Lyla 