I used to have this girlfriend. She was one of the most strangely OCD people I ever lived with. For example. It always took her an extra ten minutes to put on her socks because she had to make sure they were going on the correct feet. She’d hold one up and turn it and poke at it until she could figure out from the big-toe poof (yes, that is a technical term) which foot it belonged upon. I’m not really sure what the toe-poof criteria were for brand new socks, but I’m sure they were complicated. Once she was satisfied she had the correct sock-foot match she’d scrunch the sock up completely into a little ball with just the big-toe poof sticking out, then slowly, … veeery slooowly … roll it up her foot and around and over her ankle. It had to fit perfectly or the whole process was restarted. Now, …I’m not saying I don’t have my neuroses. I’m just saying that this was one of about six milliongoddamned neuroses of hers, alone. Add that number of neuroses to my six trillion or so neuroses and it’s not any kind of mystery why the relationship didn’t take. That, and the cows.
The cows? You ask. Indeed. The cow fight I am about to describe ranks in my top ten of longest and most vicious relationship-benders I’ve ever had. Okay, it’s probably also in the top ten for overall weirdness.
I have no idea how this originally came up in conversation, but it did. At some point Jen remembered that when she was young she went on a field trip with her class. All girls, Catholic school class. Second or third grade. On that field trip, she was terrorized and warped for life by the sight of a “cow with a hole in it, and the hole had a plastic window so you could look inside of its stomach”. Now you find the real tipping point at which our neuroses met head to head. This was something so beyond my concept of “field trip for small children” that I had to laugh. As a matter of fact, it was also beyond my concept of - concepts, period. “Sorry, Jen, but if a teacher - a CATHOLIC teacher - took small children - A BUNCH OF LITTLE GIRLS - on a field trip, WHY would it be one so obviously tailored to send them home crying and terrified, for the rest of their lives, from having looked inside of a LIVE COW with a PLASTIC WINDOW? NOT TO MENTION… who the FUCK would put a WINDOW on a LIVE COW?”
[In retrospect, this is obviously the perfect Catholic field trip. Jen just probably forgot the bit that involved God's wrath and Smiting and all the other stuff that leads up to one having a plastic window implanted into their belly by more powerful beings.]
Anyway, so here we have: 1. Jen: I am scarred for life so I can be as neurotic a bitch as I like and 2. Taz: yeah, you’re totally fucked up, bitch go put on your socks. Needless to say, neither of us bothered to investigate this. We just talked and fought and cried - yes, cried! about the fucking plastic window cow for - no, not days… no, not weeks… MONTHS! It’s not like this was the 80’s. It was 2001. We had Google (just type “cow with a hole in it”, you’ll see). We were just too right to need it.
During one blast-it, all-out crying and screaming fight, I did finally break down call the outdoor zoo where the (still alleged) fieldtrip went. To my surprise, not only is it the case that cows with plastic windows to their stomaches exist, but -INDEED- this is considered a fine and educational thing to show small children on a field trip.
- Scapi and happy, German, UNfistulated cows
ANYHOO, I tell you this story because:
1. You may want to encourage your children’s teachers to not take them to see terrifying displays of animal abuse on field trips. That is, in case you’re not Catholic and didn’t know that was happening.
2. Google won’t save your relationship, anyway, if a fistulated cow is in the mix.
3. I was looking at the above picture of Scapi and the (happy, unfistulated) cows in Pfalz (Germany, where the scientists don’t have to poke holes in you to figure shit out) and thinking about it…
I’m sure I’ll think of more reasons I had to tell this story on the interweb, and edit later.
p.s. I was going to post a picture of a fistulated cow up here. But I won’t. Because there are a disturbing amount of fistulated cow pictures already smeared across the web - I mean, loads and loads of pictures of kids with their hands stuck inside plastic windows in the sides of cows. There are also loads of sites talking about how educational this is and how it doesn’t harm the cow in any way (sure buddy, let’s put a holey pvc window in your belly button, stick our fingers in a few times per day to see how digested your food is, and see how great you feel about it!), etc etc. If these guys were as smart as they say, they’d find a better way to examine half-digested grass.
I can’t stand to see animals subjected to bullshit like this - especially since most of the subjecting is not being done by good-guy vets, it’s being done by cow-food and cow-hormone researcher vets working for big companies to see if they can make more money by changing cow diets. /end rant, and apologies. At least I didn’t hotlink you to the PETA website.
