Drawing a Circle in the Sand - Teaching Awareness to A Consumer Society  by Sheri Dixon               

The following is a true story. Names have not been changed to protect the innocent.

   On a picnic one fine day several years ago, my son Alec and I were lunching with my friend MaryHelen and her twin boys, James and Noah, also my son’s age. Approximate age of these boys at the time is right around four years old.

   My son was busy munching his Happy Meal and took a moment out from ingestion of grease and preservatives to inquire if the liquid in the wax carton was cow's milk or goat's milk. I told him it was cow's milk and he accepted that without comment.

   My friend’s boys however, were suddenly very quiet and eyeing their wax cartons with grave suspicion.

   “What do you mean, what KIND of milk???” they asked Alec.

     Alec cheerfully explained. “The milk at OUR house is goat's milk. Every morning my mom goes out and feeds the goats. Then she gets down on the ground next to them and milks them like this (insert visual of young boy doing realistic rendering of milking a goat). She brings it into the house, strains it and puts it in the fridge for us to drink.”

   After a stony silence, James announced, “Well, OUR milk comes from the STORE”.

   Alec allowed that most people do not have goats in their yard and that for the unfortunate masses; store-bought cow's milk is the only sad alternative for a calcium-laden drink. James and Noah were STILL not happy, saying that THEIR milk does NOT come from COWS, it comes from the STORE.

   In the manner of most pre-school and congressional discussions, this rapidly escalated to fisticuff status.

   Now, MaryHelen is a veterinarian and these boys are exposed to many animals, both in and out of nature, all the time. The Circle of Life is not a stranger to them. Or so she thought…

   At James’s pronouncement, followed by the zealous statement of belief, and the impending physical assault, MaryHelen was alarmed, and rose to the occasion with alacrity.

   “WAIT - you are ALL right!” she hollered, the scruff of one boy in each hand, while I also held my combatant at bay. She then detailed how the cow's milk that is usually in THEIR sippy-cups goes from the cow, to the automatic milking machine, into a truck with a lot of other cows’ milk from a lot of other farms, to the factory to be cleaned up, sterilized, and cartoned, ready to be delivered to their local store. That’s the point where they become personally involved with said milk. From cows. And that Alec spoke truth when he told them where HIS milk comes from.

   Once the light of righteous indignation left the eyes of the three boys, they were loosed to resume their meal in silence. James and Noah would have nothing more to do with their milk.

   I whispered to MaryHelen “Just wait till they learn that eggs come out of chickens’ butts - they’ll never eat another egg”.

   She blanched and looked a little faint.

******* 

   Americans have always been farmers. Most of our founding fathers had huge farms and spent at least as much time in the fields and barns as thinking up Important Documents to sign. Then something happened.

   We moved off of the farms in droves - driven by emancipation, drought, depression, disillusionment, and the siren song of the cities who were hungry for manpower to run the ever-larger factories and accompanying businesses. Obviously this factory-workin’ thing was not a cushy gig by any stretch of the imagination, but the promise of weekly wages that relied on your ability to get to work and do your job instead of your life resting on whether Mother Nature rained on your crops or not was a welcome relief to many.

   A fundamental drive of the human soul is the wish that your children have a better life than you do. In the urban world, the way to a better life lay NOT in going back to the land, but to college for an advanced education. When the children of these factory workers reached their teens they did NOT swing BACK, they swung forward.

   Teachers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, art history majors, mechanical and aerospace engineers began rolling off of the collegiate assembly lines like the Buicks and Frigidares that their fathers made.

   This puts the average American at least two generations off of the land.

   So what the heck does all that have to do with James, Noah and Alec dukin’ it out over the source of their moo juice?

   Somewhere in all this mess we call ‘advancement’, we not only abandoned the rural ways, we learned to shun them as well.

   Clone-like orbs of vegefection that taste as interesting as they look have replaced fresh veggies from the garden, still warm from the sun and as individually scarred and lopsided as we are. Small details like vitamin content and flavor have been cast aside for uniformity, toughness under shipping stress, and shelf life. The veggies we buy at the supermarket have been genetically altered, chemically fertilized, drowned in pesticide, power-washed and dunked in wax, but thank GOD they aren’t DIRTY.

   Meats (actually chickens, pigs, and cows - who KNEW?) are grown in horrendous conditions and fed enough steroids to make them grow fast and enough antibiotics to keep them alive till we kill them. Of course ‘we’ does not technically refer to ‘us’, because ‘we’ don’t really want to see them till they are killed, gutted, soaked in anti-bacterial preservatives, hosed (mostly) off, and wrapped in shrink wrap. They aren’t really animals anymore then, they are tenders, chops, and steaks. 'Cause eating dead animals would be gross.

   “We get milk from cows and eggs from chickens” is our standard line to children. Are we even aware that when they put a picture to this statement they most likely get a mental image of various barnyard animals in white coats, manning the assembly lines in the milk and egg factories?

   And let’s look for a moment at the other end of things.

   There’s a most magical vehicle that comes into your neighborhood on a regular basis. You can hear it from blocks away by the sound it makes. People run out of their houses to meet it. People look forward to it’s coming. People are very sad when they miss it, and some have actually been known to chase it down in their cars.  By your smile I know you know what I am talking about.

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