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frogs_of_warLast night after reading Dibbs post about the Daisy-Drop, I remembered a funny, awkward, WTF situation I experienced. I’m not sure I can do it justice, but I’m going to try.
When my daughter was a toddler, a woman with a little girl only a few months older than mine moved in next door to my mother. My mother became friends with her, and since at the time I was visiting my mother nearly every day, I became something more than an acquaintance to Tracy.
One day when I was visiting, Tracy came over and said she’d seen a cow in a field nearby; would I like to take my daughter to look at it when she took hers? I agreed. I’d seen my share of cows, but my daughter hadn’t, so I walked to quarter mile or so to the small field on the edge of town.
We propped our kids up on the wire fence and let them look. It was just a bull standing in a field and not that interesting. To me. But Tracy seemed fascinated by the huge creature. And then she asked something that still makes me shake my head when I remember it. “I wonder, is it a girl cow or a boy cow?”
I turned and looked at her. She was staring at the bull with her brows furrowed. Could she really not see what I saw? I looked back at the bull, which was hung like, well, a bull. I looked back at her, waiting for her to answer her own question or say she was kidding, but she didn’t look like she was kidding. So I gave in and said it was a bull.
And then to my amazement, she asked, “How can you tell?”
I think my jaw hit my chest. How could I tell?
Now I can’t tell the sex of, say, cats. It’s been explained to me, but it’s never seemed important. I’m not the type that picks up a kitten and looks under its tail first thing. The important things in a cat are its looks and if it will let me pet it. The end.
But I just couldn’t (and still can’t) imagine someone not knowing the difference between a bull and a cow. How could Tracy be thirty and not be able to tell?
It’s not exactly rocket science.
And how was I supposed to tell her? In words that we wouldn’t have to worry about our toddlers picking up?
Finally I told her that it didn’t have an udder.
“But,” she said, “it doesn’t have horns.”
And then I had to explain that horns didn’t matter as much as that thing that wasn’t an udder hanging between the bull’s back legs.
When my daughter was a toddler, a woman with a little girl only a few months older than mine moved in next door to my mother. My mother became friends with her, and since at the time I was visiting my mother nearly every day, I became something more than an acquaintance to Tracy.
One day when I was visiting, Tracy came over and said she’d seen a cow in a field nearby; would I like to take my daughter to look at it when she took hers? I agreed. I’d seen my share of cows, but my daughter hadn’t, so I walked to quarter mile or so to the small field on the edge of town.
We propped our kids up on the wire fence and let them look. It was just a bull standing in a field and not that interesting. To me. But Tracy seemed fascinated by the huge creature. And then she asked something that still makes me shake my head when I remember it. “I wonder, is it a girl cow or a boy cow?”
I turned and looked at her. She was staring at the bull with her brows furrowed. Could she really not see what I saw? I looked back at the bull, which was hung like, well, a bull. I looked back at her, waiting for her to answer her own question or say she was kidding, but she didn’t look like she was kidding. So I gave in and said it was a bull.
And then to my amazement, she asked, “How can you tell?”
I think my jaw hit my chest. How could I tell?
Now I can’t tell the sex of, say, cats. It’s been explained to me, but it’s never seemed important. I’m not the type that picks up a kitten and looks under its tail first thing. The important things in a cat are its looks and if it will let me pet it. The end.
But I just couldn’t (and still can’t) imagine someone not knowing the difference between a bull and a cow. How could Tracy be thirty and not be able to tell?
It’s not exactly rocket science.
And how was I supposed to tell her? In words that we wouldn’t have to worry about our toddlers picking up?
Finally I told her that it didn’t have an udder.
“But,” she said, “it doesn’t have horns.”
And then I had to explain that horns didn’t matter as much as that thing that wasn’t an udder hanging between the bull’s back legs.
