Tag teamed

I was tagged by Wendy and Suzanne.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you

2. Post the rules to your blog

3. Write 6 random things about myself

4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them

5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

Here are my 6 random things:

Since I've done something similar before, I am going to list some of my "hick-est" random things here just for fun. I haven't always been a city girl.

1. Growing up, I spent my summers earning money. When I wasn't delivering newspapers or babysitting, I was "walking beans" or "detasseling corn". For you city folk, both of these are farm field hard manual labor jobs done very early in the morning to avoid the heat.

"Walking beans" is literally walking every row of a soy bean field to chop out the weeds with a giant corn knife.

"Detasseling corn" involves removing the tassel (the pollen-producing top part of the plant) from every stalk of corn in a field so it can't pollinate itself. Pollen from another variety of corn in the same field is carried by the wind to pollinate the detasseled corn. This is done to get the genetic characteristics of both types to produce healthier crops and higher yields.

Both are miserable tasks due to the amount of dew on the leaves in the morning. Your clothes are literally soaked and there are inches of mud caked on the bottoms of your shoes while you continue to go row by row until a field is done. These are the jobs that pushed me to study 2 more hours in college on those nights when I didn't think I had anything left.

2. I once took an ex-boyfriend (ex is a key word here) snipe hunting. Stupid city boy had it coming as he actually asked my old schoolmates when we were going snipe hunting in his tough-guy voice when I brought him home for the weekend in college. They looked at me for approval and I gave the go ahead. He was left in the middle of nowhere (to him anyway) late at night while making some crazy "snipe call" noise that we made up. We, of course, went back to get him and he was so pissed. I still get a little chuckle when I think of him wearing that long leather coat and hunting cap making a "snipe call" in the dark of the night. It was all good fun and trust me, he had it coming.

3. My Uncle Buck (he was Uncle Buck long before John Candy) taught me how to drive a stick shift in his old beat up 80's suburban in a hay field when I was 15. I could barely see over the dash and the ground was so bumpy. He would always open a Pepsi as soon as he got into the passenger's seat and if it spilled, I failed. I failed alot that summer. LOL.

4. Underage drinking is almost a given in most small Midwestern towns. I am one of the guilty. Here is how I learned to drink beer and forgo all the girly drinks. There are 3 bars and only 900 people where I grew up. Buyers were usually early 20-something guys who never left home. Because everyone knew they were "buyers" if they went into one of the bars for wine coolers, they didn't like to buy them. To secure a buyer, I learned to like beer.

5. I was 1 of 2 distance runners at our high school. Our coach used to tell us to run out on a gravel (country) road and to not turn around until we hit the first farmhouse.

6. I had my own inside spy on the nearby law enforcement for 3 of my high school years. There was 1 cop in our town - the cop. LOL. When they couldn't find anyone to fill the position, they asked my dad's cousin to do the job for a few years. He had no formal training/college education and his prior employment was at a grain elevator in a nearby town with a population of ~50 people. He was "the cop" during my sophomore through senior years and he used to call me to give me a warning if there were going to be undercover cops or big busts at certain locations.


Tag...you're it!

1. wishing4one at After 10 Years... Finally...IVF

2. Phoebe at Tales of the Phoenix

3. Sam at Communique

4. Sara at Gas Passer aka UUer

5. Flying Monkeys at Run...Fat Girl...Run

6. Shelby at What I Did for Love