I Made Him Promise

Okay, we'll briefly discuss my vacation and never speak of it again.

I grew up in a rural area. I went to a small high school that gave me a very good education and I'm quite proud of my public education. However, let's be honest and say that my social and political views do not quite match up with those of the kind folks with whom I went to high school. The people I went to high school consider it odd to have less than three kids by the time you are 26 and even odder to not be married at 27 (oh, you crazy spinster).

When my parents moved us to the house in the cornfield, I was in second grade. That's cool. I had to walk about a quarter of a mile to catch the school bus. Again, that's cool, although a quarter of a mile to a malnourished seven-year-old with the wind gusting in her face can seem like a really long ways. No one told me about hunting. Namely, no one told me that our neighbors would shoot a deer, gut it, and hang it from the tree in their front yard right next to where I had to wait for the bus. I was sobbing by the time the bus got there (not sure what was the most upsetting - the dead deer or the idea that someone put a noose around it and hung it up) and the kids on the bus made so much fun of me. I vowed then and there to never again flinch when confronted by dead deer or dead deer byproducts. So in high school when my friend C's dad came in to their house with hands all bloody from gutting a deer, I took it in stride without blinking. When offered venison jerky, I always took it, never letting my slight unease show.

So when I was leaving C's house last Wednesday and was confronted by a pile of blood and flesh on their front porch, I forgot all about vows made when I was seven and screamed and ran away. C had the gall to laugh at me. Apparently her avidly crazy hunter husband wants to mount the skull of his latest deer kill on the wall in their house. They already have one full head, but now he wants a skull. So he took the skull out of their freezer and boiled off the flesh.

I don't want this to come off as anti-hunting. I understand and respect reasons for hunting. Deer overpopulation is a serious problem and I'd rather C's husband kill the deer than hit the deer with my truck. C's family does eat the meat. But I do want this to come off as anti-boiling the flesh off the deer head in my house. Also, anti-storing a deer head in my freezer.

I immediately called Biker Boy and made him promise not to boil a deer head in my house - ever. He agreed without much comment, apparently envisioning in his own mind what I had gone through that night.

Tomorrow: throwdown with evangelical Christians and how I am responsible for the downfall of America.