“WHY DO WE NEED FARMERS? I ONLY EAT FOOD FROM THE SUPERMARKET!”

Perhaps I have mentioned that TDW-Mark II grew up on a farm. As you might expect, she is familiar with chickens, and the process whereby eggs are acquired. She is, in addition, familiar with the process whereby chickens are changed into roast chicken, and even into chicken nuggets.

Similarly cows, and milk, as with cows and beef.

So, she was in school studying to prepare herself to be a social worker. Of course, she was required to take a course on ecology, or some similar stuff, because, after all, what social worker will be able to mend broken psyches, or minister to the fearful and ill, should she/he not have studied ecology, amirite?

Please understand that, while I did, indeed , “trade up” with the transition from Wretched EX (formerly TDW-Mark Ø), my wife (TDW-Mark II) is very much a non traditional student. This works both from the perspective of her age (she is not a gosling), as well as her having had some life experience prior to college. In addition, she has developed opinions based upon that life experience, and they are not particularly consonant with the stereotypical gosling/kid kollege student opinion set.

In her class, she learned all sorts of wonderful things, such as why corn in general, and corn syrup in particular, are death in a carton/on a cob, and ZOMG! WE! ARE! ALL! GOING! TO! DIE!, because of the presence of corn and corn syrup in our diets. Nice.

So, this one time, the class took a field trip (no, I do not, either, understand the point of a college class taking a field trip, unless is it a paleontology or archaeology class visiting some dig somewhere. This was not such a class!) Since this is Land Grant College Country, and the local Enormous State University is a Land Grant College, well, her little ecology class visited the Land Grant College Agricultural School. To be exact, the University Farms.

Being a farm girl, TDW Mark II dressed accordingly. Jeans, boots, denim shirt, hair up in a baseball cap, gloves in her pocket. No surprises there, right?

Her gosling classmates, not so much. Once she got home (TDW, not the gosling/classmate), she was laughing (TDW, not the gosling classmate).

TDW started off her after action report with a dramatic foreshadowing. “Ohmigawd! I just cannot believe some people! This one girl showed up for the farm tour in nice, dressy, high heeled boots, a nice dress, and a nicer blouse. You had to see her picking her way around the cow pen! And, she had lots of fun on the ladders! It seems that miniskirts are not really designed with climbing in mind, although the guys in class did not seem to mind very much!”

I had spent the day washing clothes, washing dishes, cutting the grass, and suchlike so that we could spend a nice weekend doing something that was NOT chores, so I nodded while finishing the last of the dishes.

It seemed that TDW Mark 2’s classmate had some difficulty meandering around the farm. Farms, after all, are industrial environments, when you stop to think about it. Once the procession had returned to the classroom, Ms Fine Clothes dove deeper into the vat of clueless in which she had evidently immersed herself.

The instructor initiated some sort of discussion, perhaps seeking to tie the afternoon’s travels back into the nominal subject of the class (ecology, or environment, or some such thing). This student observed that she or he had not appreciated how much effort went into raising and marketing animals for milk, eggs, and meat. Another noted the vast difference between the olfactory experience of a farm, and the Styrofoam cleanliness of the supermarket.

Ms. Nice Clothes stood and made her point. “Oh! My! Gawd! I could NEVER eat an egg from a chicken! They come out of their butts! I’m so glad that I only ever have eaten eggs from the supermarket!”

And, TDW Mark II wonders why it appears that I have a tic, consisting of shaking my head and muttering “What the actual FUCK?!?”

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