My Unusual Youth

I title this,”My Unusual Youth”; although, I am not sure exactly what a “usual” youth would be. Is there really such a thing as a “normal” life? No one knows. But what I personally believe is that everyone has a unique life in some aspects at least, so here is the story of mine.

I am the fourth child of five kids. Yeah, I know.. nowadays that seems like a lot. We were all born so close together making us perfect company for each other Of course, many fights came with that. My entire life I have grown up on a 173’ acre horse farm, but there is no worthy title to capture the magic of my home. Along with owning horses, we own other animals like donkeys, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, sheep, cows and of course, dogs and cats.

What could one family want with all that land and animals?

We have always had our pond and petting zoo open all year round for people to come and go as they pleased. People could book trail rides and riding lessons or just come to fish and enjoy the animals. We even had fancy tipis we set up for people to book a night or two to stay in. I cannot remember a time where there wasn’t someone here. I have never been bothered by seeing random people around my house; it is completely normal to me. My friends would come over and ask, “Who is that?” as they point to some random person and I would always just say, “No idea, why would I know?”

Honestly, I’ve always thought if I were to be arrested for anything, it would be trespassing because it feels normal to go anywhere as long as you aren’t hurting anyone or anything. I can just see myself wandering on someone else’s farm and the cops called on me. I mean, if a person has a lot of land or a farm, why not share it?

Every summer growing up, we had horse and fishing camps for kids to come experience life on my farm. When I was little, I would always attend the camps as one of the kids but as I grew up I began helping out and volunteering to work at the camps. We would spend the whole mornings focused on horses and the barn chores, then spend our afternoons doing activities and Bible lessons. At the end of the week we would have a horse show for the kids to show off their newly-learned skills to their parents. This went on almost every week out of the summer.

Once summer was over, we would have Family Fun Days and Fall Festivals with hayrides, face paint, pony rides, water wars, concessions and booths, pumpkin painting, and food cooked over bonfires. Even at a very young age, I would always help out at events whether it was directing cars, selling tickets, cleaning trash, leading horses, painting faces, or helping at the petting zoo. Even just helping out, I still always had a blast! Hundreds and hundreds of people would come all day and enjoy everything we had to offer.

With Christmas on its way, we began to host a nativity walk recreating the story of Jesus’ birth. I remember getting into old ragged costumes and putting on dirty makeup to fit my role as someone from 6-4 BC. My dream was to reenact the angel’s scene but sadly I never did. I still always had fun helping everyone else or delivering food to my friends and family acting out the characters. We would have so many bonfires and concessions with hot chocolate and chili made in a huge pot over the fire. At the end of the “journey”, we had a huge scroll or census people would sign with an ink pen which was always so cool to me.

Out of all these events, my favorite one was always our Easter Reenactment. It was similar to our Christmas event where we dressed up in costumes and reenacted scenes but for some reason the Easter one was always my favorite. We only did it a couple times that I can remember. Maybe that is what made it so special

Here I am, writing about all these events that happened in my life… but what was my everyday life outside of events? I do believe I’m supposed to tell some specific story from my life in this.

I grew up in a family where learning how to hunt and fish was a necessity. I spent my time hanging out with my siblings and their friends having mud fights, shooting targets or animals, swimming in the James, racing four wheelers, and of course.. playing video games. We didn’t always goof off and play in the pond or build forts in the woods though. Living on our huge farm came with many many chores. That’s why we made a game out of everything. For example, in Autumn we would get all our friends together and spend 1-2 days straight raking all the leaves up, loading and unloading them to our leaf pile. We would play some music and create games and competitions to see who could load the fastest. In the end, it never felt like a chore to me. I would look forward to leaf season just so I could share those moments with friends and family again.

My childhood was far from perfect, but I am very fortunate for the life I grew up with. It’s almost sad to end this paper because as I wrote this and recalled hundreds of memories, for a second I felt as though I were there once again. Many of the things I wrote about are no longer a part of my life but I think that has made me appreciate all the more.

This paper may not match what the prompt meant, but it surely helped me say goodbye and have some closure as I pack up my things and say goodbye to my home.