Along with dinosaurs and circuses, farms are one of those many things that we're taught about all wrong in our childhood. We begin to grow up with these wonderful expectations that all pigs are adorable and pink, roosters made the "cock-a-doodle-doo" sound, dinosaurs were big and cuddly and every circus has a man with a mustache holding a chair next to a friendly lion. But around the age of eleven or so our schools begin to slowly crush all of our childhood hopes and dreams. I used to be all about those cute and cuddly farm animals that I saw pictures of on my placemats and in cartoons that said things like "oink oink" and "moo" and stuff. But then, of course, we all learn that some pigs aren't pink but brown (and not even a nice brown, more like the mystery things you fish out of the garbage disposal kind of brown), roosters don't actually say "cock-a-doodle-doo," dinosaurs were ugly and terrifying and carnivorous, and...well, I'm pretty sure many circuses have men with mustaches holding chairs near lions. Nevermind.
Point is, there are many things about farms and farming that are withheld from us as children. They don't want us to know that farmers wake up at the crack of dawn every single day and pretty much work their asses off all day long in the heat or snow outside and around filthy animals and bugs and dirt and sweat and they have to take care of a lot of land and animals and by the end of the day they're so exhausted (I'm guessing at this point, I mean I've never been/known a real live farmer) that they can't do anything but be grumpy and eat a little and go to bed early. Then they wake up and do it all over again the next day. And the day after that. Also farmers lead a pretty difficult life otherwise. Most of the time these days farms are run by families who make their living selling the goods that their farm produces, and if the goods are bad (heheh) one season they can't make moneys off it. So they pretty much starve. Or they eat the bad goods (heh). But they still go on and hope for the best next year.
I don't know why they don't teach us these things when we're children. If they told us the truth about farming, we'd learn all about perseverance and optimism rather than cute n' cuddly animals that oh wait aren't cute and cuddly they're rank and disgustingly unclean. They should teach us about all kinds of farmers, from those American ones that we usually stereotype to farmers from around the world, like African tribal farming (yams!) and Alaskan Eskimos and their seal hunting or whatever those crazy clowns do up there in the snow.
Eskimos are one of those topics I wish I learned more about as a child. All we learn about them when we're young is that they're people who live in the snow, build igloos, and wear puffy jackets with fur hoods that are pulled tight around their faces. And that's pretty much all I still know about them. My knowledge of Eskimos is almost entirely based on two things: childhood cartoons and the Frank Zappa song "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow." And trust me, neither of those are reliable sources. "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" was the first Frank Zappa song I ever heard (side note: if you've never heard a Zappa song and you want to listen to this one, I just want to warn you that he's basically - wait, scratch that. not basically, definitely - insane). If you don't know the song, it's about a dream he had once (hearing Frank Zappa's dreams is pretty much the equivalent of watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory but on acid, turned upside down and dubbed in Norwegian) that he was once an Eskimo who wanted to go to a rock concert and his mother didn't want him to. The best part of the song is the end, when his Eskimo mother, with a tear in her eye, says to him "watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow."
And that's all I know about Eskimos. They live in the snow, wear puffy parkas, live in igloos, like to go to rock concerts but can't, and are often reminded to not eat pee-snow.
...maybe I should've wikipedia-ed this one.
Slinkies to Soviet Russia
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