Growing Up Country

I've found the comments of some of my friends quite perplexing as of late.  One friend on facebook was detailing her freak-out of having seen a mouse in her house.  She left the house immediately, bought traps, and had someone else handle the rest of the situation.  If I remember correctly, she even stayed with friends overnight because she was so freaked out.

Another friend blogged about seeing an enormous beetle in her house and how grateful she was that it wasn't a mouse.

Pro tip: You're more likely to get the mouse if you use peanut butter.  Occasionally mice can make off with the cheese and not get caught. 

Wait, what?  Is this real life?  I think it is.  Perhaps it's because I grew up poor and in the middle of nowhere, but we had some mice in our house.  So we just set traps (they are dirt cheap).  When we heard one snap we'd wait a few minutes for the mouse to completely die then take it outside to the trash.  Last step: set another one.  (It's not like we were dirty people, this was the country).  This is absolutely not a big deal to me.  

Bugs in the house stress me out much more because if you see one, in all likelihood there are hundreds more.  We used to have to set "fly bombs" in our house then leave for the day.  Basically they were aerosol cans of poison that you set around your house and then when you come back after a safe amount of time you have to sweep up all the bugs.  Gross.  Also, damn the fact that there were chicken farms close so we had so many flies. 

Last night at the bonfire I got a splinter in my thumb.  My fingers were too short and stubby to remove it so I asked my roommate to pull it out and she freaked.  Then I pulled out my pocket knife and asked if it would help if she cut the skin on top (it was buried pretty deep).  She was completely done after that.  Luckily Gentry manned up and got it out.  I found another this morning that's even deeper that I'll have to cut to access.  

I can clean a fish and cook like a champ.  I'm not strong enough to skin a deer, but if it's quartered I know how to break it down after that.  A mouse in the house is not a big deal.  I hate wearing shoes.  The bottoms of my feet are tough almost like a hobbit.  I love the smell of campfire.  Give me an old fashioned crank style ice cream maker and I can produce ice cream.  I've spent hours and hand ground pounds upon pounds of deer sausage.  In fact, I know all the different ways to season it depending on the intended use.  I've been squirrel hunting and eaten the result.  (Why do so many of my country tendencies have to do with food?) I don't wait on anyone to help me move furniture or boxes, I can figure out a way to do it on my own.  I say yes ma'am and yes sir on a regular basis.  Minor in home surgeries (splinters, in-grown toe nails, etc) are no big deal.  

Apparently these things aren't normal.  They come from growing up in the country (good old Luray, VA) with expectations.  Kids aren't for playing while adults work, kids are for making the work get done faster.  Maybe that means you carry the deer quarters from the tree where it's strung up to the kitchen where mostly women are cleaning and organizing the meat.  When you get older, you join the women.  Maybe you haul wood or build fires or take care of babies when you're still one.  Maybe you join your dad for a Saturday of activities (probably a trip to the dump and hopefully Tastee Freez).  Maybe you join your mom and weed the garden, pick up rocks, and make some vegetable soup.  It's all part of growing up country.  And I'm glad to have that experience.