Milk Shake

I've decided not to post my stories in any particular or chronological order. I think a flip book of my life makes things a little bit more interesting to the reader and therefore more unpredictable, much like myself.
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I must have been around 12 years old at the time; my family was living in Southern Illinois in a house out in the country. Directly in front of my house there was a small fenced in pasture with an extremely steep hill leading up to the neighbors house and their barn. The neighbor would let his cows out to graze and they would occasionally scale this mega hill to get to the pasture at the bottom. Of course there was a much less steep way to get to the bottom of the hill and the cows did have the option of taking the long way around, but just like humans I suppose there are impatient and lazy cows that rather than take a longer, safer, route will attempt something much more dangerous for the sake of saving a few minutes.

So, it was the Summer of 99 or thereabouts and I was sitting outside on the front porch muching on some chicken nuggets and french fries, drinking fruit punch and just enjoying being outside on a nice summer day. There were a few cows down in the pasture already, and I could see more coming along the fence line and down  another hill up the street a bit. So as I sat there looking at the cows and eating nuggets I noticed another cow up at the top of the very steep hill directly in front of me. Now, like I said, this was unusual since most cows didn't go down this hill since it is so steep. I decided to see how this was going to play out.

It didn't take long before the cow, having gone 1/3 of the way down the hill realized that this was likely a bad route to take, the ground was gravelly and loose and he was sliding quite a bit trying to find traction for his hooves.  I sat in rapture watching this cow, having attempted to sled down this hill the winter prior, I knew what he was in for but could only watch and wait.

Deciding that at this point he was committed to his path, the cow gave up any attempt to go back up the way he'd come and just went for it.  He started down at a jaunty pace and for a moment I thought he was going to make it all the way down without incident. But things did not go so well for the cow. Being the huge, lumbering, top heavy beast he was, he inevitably stumbled in the loose, gravelly dirt.

Gravity did the rest.

Down he went. Attempting the entire time to regain his footing; the cow barrel rolled down the rest of the hill. Mooing frantically, eyes bugging out, he tumbled. And I watched, chicken nugget halfway to my mouth, I sat there mesmerized as this animal rolled down a hill in front of me. It all lasted maybe 3 seconds before he was at the bottom of the hill. He lay there for a moment, dazed, before gingerly standing back up, looking around at the other cows, and then slowly lumbering off towards a tuft of grass.

I don't think I have ever laughed so hard. I sat there, lunch forgotten, and laughed, tears streaming down my face. "I saw that!!!!" I yelled at the cow. But neither he nor the other cows paid me any attention, and I soon realized that nobody but me had seen what had transpired, and sadly, nobody would ever quite understand or really believe me when I told them what happened.

But to this day, even though he is likely a frozen burger patty at this point; I give props to that cow for having the balls to take that hill. For standing up and brushing himself off while someone laughed at him, and for moving on to his intended goal.