Living That Bullied Life

When I was growing up, there were bullies in school, but bullying was something that was kind of glossed over. It wasn't really an issue that was discussed much, which meant I had to deal with bullies without really having a word for the problem or an understanding of why people would be so mean to my siblings and me. Of course, I knew the specifics of why people made fun of us - we were the “stinky farm kids.” However, there was really nothing we could do to avoid being stinky. Since we lived and worked on the farm, it was hard for us to even realize we smelled bad. To us, it was just life.

During our elementary school years, kids didn’t seem to DIRECTLY taunt us too much about being stinky, but they still WHISPERED about it around us constantly. We started to be very aware that we were being talked about and would tell our parents, but nothing changed. Our parents, mostly “Dad,” would say that they would “show them,” but they never did anything. It was mostly a lot of talk from those who should have protected us. We still had to help with chores before school but weren't allowed time for baths or showers before we had to run to catch the bus. There was never even talk about changing our schedule so we could bathe daily; we were told we could only take baths every other day. So we would wear zip-up hoodies with the hoods tied tight around our faces or wear bandanas tightly wrapped around our hair to try and protect the stink from reaching us. Now I know that no matter what we did, the smell would permeate all layers and there was no getting away from it - unless we stopped working all-together.

By the time we made it to middle school, the bullying had reached an all-time high, and it was basically a nightmare to go to school every day. My place of escape had lost its glamour because kids were so evil. We continued to do what we could to not smell bad, which included wearing perfume and lots of deodorant, but nothing really removed the smell. 

Not only were we the stinky kids, but we missed the first day of school in sixth grade! Sixth grade was the first time we left our tiny school, where we knew everyone, to go to a large school that included children from three other schools. At the end of fifth grade, two of the best friends Tracy and I had suddenly became friends with each other and ditched us. So not only did we start in a new, larger school, where we had no idea where our classes were (this was the first time we changed rooms for each class, too), but we also had no friends outside of each other. Tracy and I didn’t have any classes together that year either, which sucked. 

Every year in middle school, we were assigned lockers. Sometimes we could pick a locker partner, and sometimes one was assigned to us. Having lockers for the first time turned out to be dreadful. Lockers were places where people did evil things and made us feel absolutely terrible. We had many car fresheners tied to our jackets, and we had room freshener sprayed all over our things daily. We would also find notes calling us “stinky” and telling us to take a shower and clean ourselves. The bullying didn’t stop at our lockers. We were also called names as we walked down the halls, and we were sprayed as we walked quickly from our lockers to our next classes. I still loved school, when I was in a class, and it was still better than being on the farm, but I hated the feeling of constantly being on edge and wondering what would happen next as I walked down the halls or went to my locker.

We didn’t just suffer while walking the halls of school. Kids thought it was fun to do mean things to us from the moment we got on the school bus until the moment we got off. Sure, there were some days when we were left alone. But more often than not kids would bring room freshener, body spray or perfume and spray us the minute we sat in our seats. Sometimes the spray went in our eyes, but it never seemed to matter. I don’t recall any kid ever getting in trouble for bullying us. However, it may have been that we didn’t ever tell on them because we didn’t want to be labeled as snitches. What I do know is that if I was ever given a chance to go back and relive any of my younger years, I'd pass.

The Great Escape

I always felt differently about school than other kids did. Growing up on a farm made me both love and hate school

Going to school meant I would see how other kids got to live and all the things they got to own. We were always poor, and we couldn’t afford any of the new toys. So there were many times we would just watch as other kids played. We couldn’t really join in unless the games used imagination. But that all changed one day in first or second grade when our mom FINALLY bought Tracy and me each a My Little Pony figurine. We were so excited to have toys like all the other girls in our class, so we took our ponies to play with the girls. But at some point during the day,  someone took our ponies when we weren't paying attention! No one would fess up to it, and there was nothing we could do about it, so we went home as sad little girls with no ponies. We never got ponies to replace them and never wanted to bring our favorite toys to school again.

Even though I couldn’t take any of my toys to school for fear of losing them, I still looked forward to going to school - because it meant I could get away from the farm work. To a child, the farm work seemed so hard! I just wanted to run around and play all day, but I wasn’t allowed to because running a dairy farm takes a lot of work and people. After working on the farm for only a year or so, I realized I would never have the kind of childhood others had. We would have to get up early every day and put in an hour or so of work before getting on the bus to go to school. The chores took up a large portion of our after-school time as well. We only had 30 minutes to an hour of actual "kid time" before it was work time. Our "kid time" was generally when we could play, but sometimes we had too much homework and didn't even get time to play. So, we would come home after school, do some homework, maybe play and then go out to do some more chores. So while most kids hated going to school because it was work, I loved going to school to get away from work.

In addition, school was one of my favorite places because I loved learning new things. I especially loved learning to read! As soon as I could read, I read everything. I would ask to go to the library as often as possible and would check out four to eight books every time we went. I would bring them back and read them out loud as we were doing chores around the farm, and I would read to myself when I had some down-time. For me, reading a book let me visit a world that was so different from my own, an imaginary world that helped me forget that I lived on a farm.

Not only did I like to learn new things in school, but I always wanted to be the best at any new thing I did learn. Throughout kindergarten through 12th grade, I rarely got a grade below a B, and I would be so upset at myself if I got a C. I always worked very hard and studied non-stop to shoot for those A’s. However, even with all the effort I put into getting good grades, my mom would often tell me I was stupid. I didn’t know how to not be stupid, and I kept trying my best to get better grades. Now, I can look back and realize it was never about the grades. My mom just felt powerful when telling me I was stupid - so I could get all A’s on my report card, and it still wouldn’t matter

Like most kids, we sometimes thought school seemed too hard, and we would hope for a snow day. However, when we would actually get a snow day we would truly miss school. Snow days, for farm kids, meant a lot more work. Many times, the adults would just pile on more work that needed to be done. So we would do the normal day-to-day operations and then also have to do other chores that otherwise would have waited for a longer break from school, like Christmas or summer. So snow days were generally not fun, and we'd get sad when we heard the news of school being closed. Other kids got to do fun things like go sledding. We got to do those things, too, but only if all of the extra chores were completed.

So, like we did in so many other ways, we lived a sort of reverse life. While other kids escaped FROM school, we escaped TO school. It provided a strangely comforting break from life on the farm.

The Secret Lives of Farm Kids

Some of the things we did as kids on the farm could be seen as unusual and definitely weird, but to us, it was simply the way things were. These were things we actually enjoyed, and they helped us deal with the bad things that came with living on a farm.

During the summer months, when we were home for longer periods of time, we would get bored, so we would have to find ways to entertain ourselves. That meant improvising and turning the farm into our own playground. There were many hot days when we would take a short swim in the tanks where our cows drank. When we did this, we were surrounded not only by refreshing water, but also by cow snot, algae and water bugs - all of which lived in the tanks. 

If we completed our chores and didn’t fight, we were treated to something even better than swimming in the cow tanks. We would either go for ice cream in the nearby city of Millington or go over to a family friend's place and swim in their actual pond! All of us kids would get so excited when our parents would talk about a “treat” because we knew it would be one of these two activities. We wouldn't always know until we got in the car which it would be because they would tell us to put on our bathing suits and come prepared. The best was when we were treated to both! We would go swimming and then out for an ice cream cone dipped in either chocolate or strawberry.

Many days, Tracy and I would walk all around the farm completely barefoot because we decided we didn’t like to wear shoes! This meant we would walk through A LOT of poop. The outdoor pens, where we kept the heifers that couldn’t be milked yet, got rained on frequently, which meant the poop there was a super soupy consistency. Tracy and I used to love walking through that and feeling the poop squish between our toes. Obviously we would rinse off after walking through that much poop, but it was always this weird, exhilarating moment.

Another fun game we liked to play could have been dangerous. There were five silos around the farm, but not all of them were used to store feed. A couple of the older ones were left empty, so we used to play inside of them. One of my favorite things to do was take in several bouncy balls from the quarter machines and bounce them to see which ones could go the highest. All of us kids would go inside the silo and compete. But it was sometimes confusing because we each brought more than one ball, and after locking ourselves in it was hard to see and avoid getting hit by all the bouncing balls. Several times I got nervous that we would get locked in the silo - and with no adults knowing where we were, this could be dangerous. So, more often than not I would try to leave the door at least cracked open.

Sometime while we were in grade school, we learned about trampolines and decided we needed one, but our family couldn’t afford one. Then, once again finding things around the farm to make into toys, we found our own trampoline! Granted, it was pretty gross and didn’t last, but it was fun for a few days. One of our cows had died and was buried in a field, but apparently she wasn’t buried deep enough, so she bloated up, making a mound in the field. We had so much fun jumping on her while she was all bloated and were sad when the bloating went away and we no longer had a trampoline. It wasn’t until a few years later that we actually received a real trampoline. Even this real one wasn’t the safest thing around though. It had been sitting on the property of one of our neighbors and had been surrounded by weeds, nearly a part of the land from years of no use. We were so excited to have it. This trampoline wasn’t round like most of them are. Instead, it was a large rectangle, and it was missing several of the springs from around the edges. As we started to bounce on it, we realized the springs that were remaining didn’t necessarily want to be there either - because they would fly off! If you weren’t careful they could hit you as they went flying through the air or you could slip while bouncing and fall between the frame and the bouncing pad. Since there were missing springs and there was no cover on the remaining springs, slipping while bouncing was the main concern, but we truly loved that thing.

Looking back, it was the strangest things that brought us moments of true childhood happiness.

Having a Cow

Growing up on a farm is definitely hard, and it takes a lot out of anyone, especially a child. But there are some good parts about it, too. One of the coolest things about living on a dairy farm is that there are cows everywhere! Plus, new calves are born regularly. 

As dairy farmers, we would keep only the female calves and would send all the bulls to the Marlette stockyard, where they would be sold. We would also send females to the stockyard if they were no longer producing enough milk. Running a dairy farm is all about having milk, so we couldn’t keep those that didn’t produce, even if we liked them.

Speaking of liking cows, we would give every new calf a name from a baby book. It was fun to come up with names and mark them down in our records. Eventually, all of us kids had a cow named after us, too! It was incredibly cool to share a name with a cow. Since Fred was obviously a boy, and we got rid of all the male calves, the cow with his name was actually Frederica. 

There was this huge chart where we would keep track of the cows that were fertilized to monitor when they should have their babies. A veterinarian would come out to the farm on a regular basis to help keep track of the cows and make sure there weren’t any complications. He could also let us know if a cow was going to have twins. Usually, if a cow had twins, both calves were sent to the stockyard to be auctioned off, no matter what their sexes were. Generally, a calf that was born as a twin didn’t produce enough milk to keep. 

However, we did get to keep some of the twins. Tracy and I loved when we got to keep twins! One particular set was born early, and they were so tiny that they both fit in a wheelbarrow together. We kept them around because they were both females and because they were so tiny we wanted to nurture them to see if they would be good milk producers when they got older. They actually turned into some of our best cows, but when they were babies they were just super cute! They were so tiny they could slip right under the gates that kept in the others, so we created a straw pen that prevented them from escaping. I remember spending a lot of time hanging out with those little girls because, for a while, it was touch-and-go as to whether or not they would survive. 

It was always amazing to see new life when a calf was born. I’m sure it would gross out some people, but it was always awesome to experience a birth and to be there to help deliver a calf if the mom was having trouble. We would put chains around the ankles of the calf while it was still inside the mom, and then we would pull. If the mom was standing up, we would have to be extra careful and have someone to help make sure the calf didn’t fall to the ground and get hurt when it came out. There were also times when a calf would start to come earlier than we had planned and we wouldn't have time to get the chains. We would just have to hold onto the legs and pull. That mostly happened when one of us kids saw a cow going into labor and wanted to be the first one to see the new baby and bring it into the world without the adults knowing. Some calves were born with a lot of goop in their mouths and noses, so we would have to pull all of that out. Sometimes, we even had to do a sort of mouth-to-mouth with a calf. But the minute the little baby mooed, we knew it was going to be OK. The miracle of a baby being born is just magical,

and it made all the issues of farm life seem insignificant for that brief moment. 

Daddy's Little Helpers

When you're 4 or 5 years old, there aren’t many things you can do to help out around a dairy farm - and there aren't many things you should be expected to do because they just aren't safe. Unfortunately for my siblings and I, life was rarely the way it "should" have been.

In order to have a lucrative farm, things need to be run a certain way. For the first year or so after moving to the farm, we kids weren’t required to do much of the farm work. Instead, our parents and newly acquired grandparents (who lived in a house next to our trailer) would handle most of the day-to-day operations. During the busy months of summer when we also had fields of corn, soybeans, hay and straw to maintain, they would enlist help from some of the other farmers who lived near us.

While the adults worked on the farm, Fred, Tracy and I were in the house with a babysitter. I don’t really remember too much from that time other than we liked her and we looked forward to the time our mom and “dad” would come back to spend time with us. We especially looked forward to seeing our new dad, whom we liked to call the “Tickle Monster” because he loved to tickle us and make us laugh so hard.

After about a year of living in our new house, we started spending more time going to the barn and learning to do chores. Fred started going out before Tracy and me because he was a year older. They wanted to get him started before us so he could show us the ropes. The first thing we were able to help with was sweeping hay. We had to keep the area where we walked clean and keep the hay in front of the cows so they could eat. Along with sweeping the hay, we were tasked with cleaning out the piles of poop from behind the cows by hoeing the poop into a gutter. This job was scarier because cows are big animals that like to kick, but it was one of the jobs we did like more. Our other main task was to hold onto the cows' tails while the adults milked them so the adults wouldn’t get smacked in the face. Out of all of these jobs, holding the tails seemed to be the hardest because the cows had a lot more strength than we did as kids and we didn’t want to upset the adults by letting them get hit in the face with a tail. But, sometimes it happened because those tails were just so fast!

We did this work for several months before we started to get any kind of compensation. But after awhile, we got paid for some of our chores which made us work even harder. Our first monetary compensation really doesn’t seem like much, but we were so excited to be getting paid anything that we didn’t mind. We were tasked to count each pile of poop that we cleared from behind the cows into the gutter, so it taught us counting as well! I would always try to get more poop than Fred or Tracy, and sometimes we all kind of fibbed the numbers to get more. It made it kind of a game for us to see who could get the most.

Always trying to compete with Fred and Tracy and trying to impress the adults with my willingness and ability to do the jobs given to me did have some drawbacks. I vividly remember one unfortunate experience that took place when I 5 years old. I wanted to prove that I was ready to get the work done and went out to start chores early, all by myself. Once I got to the barn I got a hoe and started my normal task of cleaning up the poop behind the cows. There was one cow, #9, that was very skittish and quick to react; all the adults told us kids to be careful around her. Well, that fateful day of trying to get things accomplished for the adults went awry. As I was busy cleaning up, I didn’t pay much attention to which cow I was behind, and before I knew it, I was cleaning up behind #9. She was not OK with me being there and hauled off and kicked me right in the nose! I went flying across the aisle and to the ground.

I jumped up as quickly as I could, but by that time, I was freaking out and crying and the blood was down to my feet. It looked as if I had been in a terrible accident. The first adult to see me that day was my grandma, who raced to get my mom and clean me up. My mom rushed me to the emergency room to see what kind of damage had been done. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, just a lot of blood and tenderness. Cows have holes in the bottom of their feet and that was where my nose went, so it wasn’t even broken. However, to this day, my nose is still pretty tender.

Trying to do the jobs of adults is no joke, and it's not all that fun. This was just one of the many times my siblings and I were injured because we were expected to do adult work as kids. And it was one of many proofs that our lives were far from normal.