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.