Sweet, Sweet Revenge

I was talking to my mother on the phone last week and she just sounded... different.  Giddy?  Smiling?  Giggly?  Smug?  Perhaps she was feeling a bit of all these things.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Oh nothing." She replied.  "I'm just still smiling from Kenyon's comment." 

Ugh.  Kenyon's comment. 

***

Several Sundays ago was a really nice day weather-wise and was also one of the few days this winter that a majority of our household has not been sick.  Wes took advantage of the situation and asked Kenyon and myself to help him process a load of calves that had come in that morning.  Neither one of us had to think very long or very hard when answering. 

We let Kenyon push cattle up the alleyway while I stood on one side of the chute where I put in eartags, poured wormer and gave a shot.  Wesley stood on the other side of the chute to run the chute controls, brand and implant the calves. 

Wes and I have always been really great partners when it comes to working calves together.  I've never understood the jokes about 'sorry for the things I said to you while we were working cattle.'  (Put me in a tractor with him shouting directions from the ground?  Totally different ball of wax.  I will purposefully try to run him over.  It's terrible, I tell ya'.) 

Things went very smoothly as we ran through the first 10 or 20 calves.  Occasionally I would peer through the pipes of the alleyway to watch Kenyon work and my chest would puff up with pride.  It is so heartwarming to watch your kid become a hand.  He caught me glancing at him once and took the chance to have a short conversation with me. 

"Hey, Mom, you know what?" He asked.

"What's that?"

"You're actually pretty good help." 

With one foul swoop he sucked the air from my lungs, cut me at the knees, ripped out my heart and stomped on it. 

Actually?  ACTUALLY?  I wanted to tell that little punk that I'd worked tens of thousands more cattle than him and I had spent years of my life gaining a post-secondary education in animal science, all to be told by a four year old that I was no longer THE stupidest person on earth when it came to processing cattle.  Thanks, bud. 

So, after 31 years my mother finally had her sweet, sweet revenge.  I finally understood that perhaps she knew a little something all those years ago when Dad would let her come along to work cattle and I would roll my eyes as far back in my head as possible. 

So now I'm adding to my resume that I'm actually pretty good help.