When I was in third grade, I started a "Club" with some of my friends. I had a little day planner, and I wrote down my friends' names, phone numbers, and their interests. Since I was the leader of the club, I was the first one in charge of the activity the club would do when we got together.
Well, I planned a day with my friends at our Dairy Farm for a tour. I don't know how they convinced their parents to drop them off at the dairy, but they did, and soon, all the members were gathered together in the store front booths.
We began at the calf pens, which is where I had the most experience. My grandma allowed my brother and I to help bottle feed the calves up until they were too old to bucket feed. It was one of our first jobs, aside from washing buckets, and it taught us how to work hard.
Even at the age of eight, I had been helping on the farm long enough to know the process of calf, to heifer, to cow, to milker. My parents had also offered tours of the farm for years to local schools, and since I was a baby, I'd been included on these tours, hence, I knew where to start and what to explain.
As we moved from the calf pens, to the corrals, and on to where the cows got milked, it was the perfect time: Milking time. All my friends got to see the cows being loaded into the stalls and how the milking parlor was ran. I remember the workers casting us funny looks, and my grandparents asking if my parents knew we were over there alone. I assured them that everything was fine, and continued on the tour.
We made it to the ice cream making machine, which was a favorite, since all kids love ice cream. My parents were in charge of making all the ice cream for the dairy, and I had helped since a very young age, and knew the process well. My friends loved looking inside the large drum that churned the cream and flavoring.
The milk processing was harder to explain, with words like homogenize and pasteurize. The mechanisms where huge, and it took our breath away as we went inside the enormous cooler that held thousands of bottles of milk, ready to be moved to the sales front. I loved explaining the difference between the plastic bottles and glass bottles, since glass was much more fragile and needed to be handled with the utmost care.
The end of the tour was quite a delight, as we moved back up to the sales front, and got ourselves some yummy homemade ice cream. I remember feeling extremely accomplished as all my friends asked questions and were amazed at my knowledge of the farm and how their milk got from the cow onto their table at home.
I had done it! Started my own club and shared something of my own with them. I remember us sitting there and arranging who would be in charge of the next month's activity, when my mom came into the store. She was the manager of the dairy, and I later found out one of her employees had called to let her know I was there with a bunch of my friends, eating ice cream unsupervised.
The tour had lasted about an hour and a half, and us kids had planned for that amount of time, so parents started to pick up their kids one at a time. I'm not sure what was said between my friends' parents and my mom, but all I know is, that was the one and only "Club" get together we had. I guess eight years old was too young to have club activities.
This little story is one of many things I did as a kid. I was always getting people together, creating friendships, and starting little organizations where people could feel included. I was very independent, and I think that's what drove my parents most crazy. Because I knew I could do something on my own, I did it. But that didn't always make it right, or responsible. Just because I could do it, didn't mean I should. I had a hard time understanding this, as I felt I was old enough and big enough to handle myself. My parents had to keep teaching me the lesson of asking before I did things, so they would know where I was, and what I was doing, just in case anything went wrong. Luckily, nothing ever did go wrong. In fact, the only times things did go wrong was when one of my parents was there. I must've had extra guardian angels watching over me when I was doing something much too independent for my age.
As I look at my little guy, even at the age of three, I see some very strong similarities between the two of us. I have a feeling I will be teaching him the same lessons my parents taught me. Wish me luck!
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