Isn’t it weird how some memories are so incredibly vivid in your head that you would never in the world forget them, and other things get completely forgotten? I don’t understand how or the mind works like that, but I do know that there is probably a lifetime’s worth of things that I’ve forgotten and will never remember again. But then sometimes when you are talking to people, their memories of how things were jog your memories and you end up thinking of things that you’d thought you’d forgotten. I don’t know how that fits into the whole scheme of things. Does it mean that the things that we forget aren’t really lost forever? They are just filed away somewhere that needs a password to open.
There is one specific memory I have of my childhood. It’s vivid. I don’t understand why I remember this specific event. It doesn’t seem like it would have been important in the grand scheme of my life, but I remember it as vividly as any of my memories.
We ran over a baby cow. Believe me, it’s not nearly as gruesome as it sounds. I think I was maybe a first or second grader, and we were out checking the cows. (Remember, I grew up on a working farm. I did things like that when I was a kid.) Checking the cows consisted of taking the truck out to make sure all of the cows were okay. It was springtime, so we had to make sure all the babies lived, and we had to check on the pregnant cows to make sure that everything was fine.
The truck was an old brown Dodge; I’m not sure where we got it, but I do know that it was old and brown. It had a camper shell on it, and I liked to ride back in the bed. I couldn’t talk to my parents because the camper shell made the bed into it’s own private chamber. It was kind of like a moving fort. I loved it. Well, this one particular day, I rode in the back, and I was peering out the back of the camper as we drove along in the pasture looking for cows, when a baby cow appeared under the truck all curled up in a little ball. It never moved as we passed over it. Those mother cow tells the calf where to stay until she comes back for them, and they don’t move until she comes back. Animals are pretty smart. But anyway, since I was in the back of the truck, I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened.
When we got back home, I overheard my parents talking about how they wondered where that mama cow had her baby hidden, because she’d been pregnant the last time they’d been out checking the cows, and she wasn’t this time. I yelled, “I SAW THE CALF! WE DROVE OVER IT!” They didn’t believe me. But I kept insisting that we’d driven over it, so dad took me back up to the pasture, and I showed him where I saw the calf. Believe it or not, the calf was still curled up in the same place I saw it the first time. The tire tracks ran on both sides of it. Dad believed me then.
I still don’t understand why I remember that particular event. It must have been important in its way. I still think about that calf sometimes. I guess it was kind of a miracle that we didn’t actually hit it with the truck. If dad had driven a foot one way or the other, the cow would have been a pancake.
I wonder how many baby calves turn into pancakes because they just do what their parents tell them?
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