Growing up Rural

[thenew20s37]

My veterinarian, a guy I've had a crush on since 2005, and I had a conversation today about my dog's sweet disposition (very different, he noted, from my last dog's), about moving, and about the virtues of growing up "rural." He did the thing that all rural people do when he tried to explain to me where he lived: he briefly noted a town, a town I

Comments

[gravedirt]

Without anything else to do, you figure out for yourself how to distinguish a female cricket from the male, you know when the blackberries are in season, you understand how long it takes for a dead tree to lose its bark. There's just nothing else to do, and the world becomes your science class.

This is why I love your writing so much. Rich in detail, rich in truth.

[thenew20s37]

Thanks, as always, for reading my thoughts. I still haven't practiced what I preached in the other post by sending out those query letters. Still trying to get a job. If or when I do get a job outside of education, I would like to post more of this stuff, maybe add a link to FB once in a while. It's just all the allusions to drinking and to my ambivalent feelings about kids that stop me. I should censor, but I just can't! The liquor cabinet paragraph was the whole point of that post!

[gravedirt]

Good for you for not censoring! That would take away from all the truth in your writing, which is what makes it outstanding.

After this post, I thought--the rural upbringing--THERE is her story! I think you could do beautiful things with the simple story of just exactly how you learned to tell the gender of crickets. And what your first taste from the liquor cabinet was like. And how you just know the blackberries are in season without checking the shrubs.

So yes yes! Post more of this someday!