March 3, 2009

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell
Pinocchio had Jiminy Cricket to help him make decisions. I always thought that he was Pinocchio’s conscience but maybe he was more than that. Maybe he was also a warning system as well. I think that I need Jiminy to follow me around. What has lead to me to this conclusion is that with dad’s devils sitting on every fence post just waiting to jab me and keep me in total chaos, I feel that I need Jiminy. Perhaps even more than Pinocchio. Let me explain what happened. I was feeling rather frisky the other day. The weather has been so nice and I was starting to get a little spring fever. I went to the feed store to pick up some salt blocks and some calf feed. I have done this many, many times so I am not unaccustomed to what I need to do. I backed to truck to the dock and got out visited with the feed man telling him what I needed. When I got on the dock and I noticed that I left about a foot or so gap between the back of the truck and the dock. Sensing that I should go back down and back it closer to the dock- but I thought that I would be careful and it would not be necessary. Since the feed man did not say anything I figured it would be fine. I helped him load the salt blocks in my feeble way, thinking how good I was feeling. I was putting the sacked feed on the back- not as quickly as the feed man was but for an old fat woman I felt I was doing fairly well. While I was patting myself on my back, (figuratively speaking), I grabbed a sack of feed went to put my foot on the back of the truck and only found air. I fell off the dock. Talk about a humiliating experience not to mention painful. I thought that maybe the earth shook and might have gone out of orbit. I bounced back up that told the concerned man that I was fine, thinking that after I got back in the truck I just might die. But actually, it did not hurt me near as bad as I thought it should. Before anyone thinks that the feed store clerk should have done something different that is certainly not the case. I heard that still small teeny-tiny voice that said I should have backed the truck closer to the dock- so it was no ones fault but my own- Reflecting back I am so grateful that I was the one to take the tumble rather than the feed man. I would have felt really bad and it would have been my responsibility. I guess that I do have a Jiminy Cricket but like Pinocchio I did not listen to him. I have a couple of t-shirts that I like to wear- one says ‘I know that the voices are not real but they have some really good ideas’ and then I have another one the reads ‘Four out of five voices say eat the chocolate’. I think that maybe we should stop a listen to our own ‘Jiminy’s’ and maybe there will be a lot less pain in the world. Possibly there is hope for me and someday -maybe just maybe -I will become a real girl.