Retrospect: the farm kids, part 1

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor begins about the “farm kids.”

“Jack, you belong in the slaughterhouse,” one of my classmates observed one day. I recall it like yesterday: I could take you to the exact room in the school where he said it. I thought it was funny.

I won’t say the name of who said that; let’s call him X. I knew X, from his point of view, was telling the truth. He meant that I wasn’t responsible for anything, so he saw me as unconscious, similar to the animals on a farm. By age 12, he’d spent much time in the slaughterhouse, killing and processing animals for food.

I liked X and most of the other farm kids as well. At school, they were no match for me, but that’s because school had too many rules.

In their lives at home, those kids had real responsibilities and often no-one to help them. As a result, they were already anarchists, more or less. No authority had ever reached out to protect or help them, so they didn’t believe in anything – except God. They made it up as they went along. I want to clarify that the situation was the same with the girls as the guys: there really wasn’t much difference.

Back then, I didn’t understand those kids as well as I hope I do today. Yet, I liked them even then, because of their free spirit and spontaneous honesty. The disdain so many of them had for school – who can blame them? Academics didn’t matter much to a kid who was going home to kill a pig – which X did, on numerous occasions.

While the farm kids had a somewhat grim view of life at times, they could also be very playful and joyous. In the school environment, their humour and point of view seemed outrageous. Yet, there were so many of them in the class, that their input was never truly out of context.

My memories of the farm kids – including X – have grown fonder each year. They may not have been politically correct, but they never had it easy. Their courage and sense of humour sustain me even to this day – and perhaps more all the time. Moreover, they instilled in me their pragmatic, rural Canadian, “make it up as you go” philosophy. For decades I didn’t realize it came from them, but they taught me much more than I ever imagined. I wonder if they knew all along?

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.

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