I was listening to the radio the other day and heard a song I've heard a hundred times before...but this time, for some reason, I listened to the words a little more carefully.The song is by Paul McCartney and is called "Silly Love Songs":
__________
You'd think that people would have
had enough of silly love songs.
But I look around me and I see it isn't so.
Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know, cause here I go again...
...Love doesn't come in a minute,
Sometimes it doesn't come at all.
I only know that when I'm in it,
It isn't silly, no, it isn't silly, love isn't silly at all.
__________
I thought back about my first experience with those silly feelings that can come over a young teenager. For me, those feelings began to stir when I noticed an intelligent and gorgeous girl in the eighth grade. Of course she did not know how I felt. How could I say anything to her? I don't know how most young teenagers manage their first feelings of love...other than what I see in the movies (and I have become very skeptical of that representation of "reality").
I'm a Dry Farmer, so perhaps my perceptions are not typical. Likely they are not. But like the lyrics of the song, "when you are in it...love isn't silly at all". So my behavior seemed very normal; yet to relate the story in print is a difficult task. I had a crush on that girl all through high school. I did not even tell my friends how I felt.
My father had several cows we milked as part of our small farming operation. When I was in sixth grade, with the help of our local university extension agent, we began to purchase purebreed Holstein-Friesian heifers. It seemed my father wanted his kids to have a chance to be dairy farmers. Milking cows morning and night, and all the related chores, kept me busy all through my high school years. My father let each of us kids sell the milk from our animals and keep the money. He encouraged us to re-invest that money into additional animals. By the time I graduated from high school I had several animals.
Now you may be asking how these two topics, love and dairy cows, are related. So I will tell you. One of the few ways I had to express how I felt about this incredible girl I attended high school with and secretly admired was to name my prize calf with her name. I was uneasy about doing that because someone might notice...but I was also excited because I had few outlets for my feelings. And so, as shown on the official records of the Holstein-Friesian Association of America, I registered my purebred calf with her name. That is the story.
That was long ago.
Today I am married to that girl. I don't remember exactly when I told her about the cow I named in her honor. When anyone hears that story they can't believe how silly I was. But it was a very serious undertaking on my part. It was an incredible display of emotion for that young Dry Farmer.
