A Little Bit City a Little Bit Country

There are some new "Farmers Only.com" ads on television that I have to press the mute button for, because they just drive me crazy. One of them shows a couple fishing, and the overdressed snotty woman in expensive heels on the boat sees a spider and screams, and the guy in the boat rolls his eyes. Then he sees another woman fishing on shore, and of course, she's perfect for him with her sparkly-pocketed jeans, makeup, long earrings and her hat. The woman who screamed at the spider ends up in the water and the woman fishing ends up in the boat. Another one shows another overdressed woman showing up to ride a horse in heels, falling from the horse and dangling from its side. She's screaming, and instead of the man trying to help her, he sarcastically says, "city girls". It just annoys me so much!  The message? Farmers are rude and dumb, city women are snobs who don't know how to dress to go fishing or ride horses, and in fact are incapable of doing both because they are from the city. Really, Farmers Only? Stereotype much?

 I used to work in an office with farmers and their wives, and they were very nice, down to earth people-all of them. These commercials are ridiculous, and it got me to thinking about how others stereotype people just because of where they live or were raised.

I may joke about being a "city girl", but the truth is, I grew up just one block from a grain elevator in a small farm town. I may not know much about riding horses, but I've been on them, and I've never fallen off, nor screamed on one like a ninny. I can tell you, I was not made for horses, and that is another story, but I love them all the same. I love fishing, and although spiders creep me out, I've been in fishing boats where large ones have come crawling out of small holes and surprised me, among other little critters. I can handle it all, and when Steve is here, I will ask him to heroically defend me from such creatures, but I don't NEED him to. Thank you Farmers Only, but "city" women are not helpless and stupid, and I have never worn long earrings or bling jeans while fishing, have you?? It's just not practical.

Oh, she's sassy today...I know what you're thinking. I get this way sometimes in the cold bore of winter when there isn't much to do. It's doing a lot of raining instead of snowing, rendering my cross-country skis immobile for the time being, and since winter is almost over, they may get no use at all.
Back to my roots. My parents chose to raise us in town, and it turned out to be a great thing for all of us. We had great neighbors, The Robinson's , The Sentz's, and The Young's, to name a few, providing all of us with friends our ages. We had a park a couple of blocks away, we all walked to school, and we had some woods with a pond to play in a few blocks in the other direction. We had an abandoned church on a lot next door, which we turned into our ball field, and we all played there almost daily in the summer. That's when we weren't playing "cops and robbers" all through the neighborhood. This was, of course, before fences...

I learned to climb trees, pop wheelies on my bike, play hockey in the street, and pretty much do anything those neighborhood boys were doing, which depending on the day may or may not be a good idea. I also came up with a lot of messy ideas of my own, sending me to the ER a couple of times for stitches. So not your typical "city" as you think "city" would be, but I wasn't exposed to farmland either, except for the days we spent picking corn or the time I ran from a steer at my friend Amy's house and again in the barn at the fair with Anna. Okay, so that would be funny...and it was. But the steer was loose and it was big and I was not, and they said, RUN, so I ran.

In eighth grade, I started walking home from school with a girl in my class who lived a few blocks away from me. We became fast friends, having many of the same things in common. Sandy and I  had lots of fun together, cross country skiing through town after a snowfall, exploring the woods, camping, and making repairs to a window we had to break after we locked ourselves out at the cottage! She encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone many times, and even years later offered to come and kill a spider that had gone AWOL in my bed. No worries. I simply removed all of the bedding and sprinted into the laundry room, stuffing all of it into the washer. Problem solved. I slept on the couch.

I may have grown up with asphalt and concrete, and I may still screech at snakes and spiders, and I respect cows and horses to this day. But that doesn't make me "city" or "country" or whatever.  I think I'm pretty adaptable, and I just enjoy living life wherever I am and that just makes me appreciative of my surroundings. I've spent the last 10 years living in the middle of 40 wooded acres, and I've loved it, except for power outages and the occasional snake.  I think I could be happy living almost anywhere as long as I have my loved ones, my dog, and fun things to explore.

Be blessed wherever you are!