Cows+-+Jen's+narrative+essay

Jen Mandelbaum Composition Mr. Bouton 1/10/08  Cows Most people pull over to the side of the highway when they have a flat tire or because it’s snowing so hard that they can’t see through the windshield anymore. For this reason, it might sound a little strange that my family pulls over to see cows. We whip out our cameras and snap picture after picture of the black and white splotches that cover fields like a pox. There’s nothing really special about cows beside the fact that they somehow convert grass to milk (and manure) and are tasty when barbecued. No, there’s not very much that’s special about them. They must have some redeeming qualities, or else I wouldn’t like them as much as I do. But the simple truth is that I only love cows because they are so hard to find. I know that last sentence sounds silly, especially since New Hampshire borders Vermont, which is not only farm country but also the home to Cabot cheese. I guess you could say it started last summer during a game of travel bingo. Travel bingo is similar to regular bingo in that the goal is to make a row or fill up the whole board for blackout. The only differences are that there are pictures of objects a person would normally see while traveling instead of numbers, and the boards are sheets of paper with pictures that we cross out once we see them. We were driving down to North Carolina for my cousin’s wedding when my mom suggested that my brother and I try playing travel bingo. We each chose different boards and began the game as usual, crossing out the more common sights like trees and stop signs first. We began playing somewhere in Connecticut and had narrowed it down to just a few boxes each by the time we reached Pennsylvania. We were going for the big kahuna: blackout. Looking over at my brother’s sheet, the score seemed tied. He was looking for a bird on a wire, while I was looking for a cow. “What are you guys looking for?” Dad asked. “A cow/a bird on a wire,” we answered, at the same time. “A cow,” I confirmed. “A bird on a wire,” my brother repeated. “Well, there’s a farm,” my dad said, and he pointed out the window. I noticed many farms pass by, but still no cows. My brother continued looking for his birds, while I wondered where all the cows had gone off to. “Maybe they are afraid of the noise from the cars zooming by on the highway,” my mom offered in consolation. “But they’re probably used to it,” I snapped, thinking about the three hundred miles we had driven without a bovine friend in sight. “Sorry,” I said apologetically. To me, the more logical reason for the lack of cows was the temperature; it was sweltering 82 degrees. As the miles passed, I became increasingly upset. “Where are the damn cows!” I yelled. “Have we eaten them all already?” We must have passed dozens of farms in Pennsylvania and Virginia, but all I could do was stare down at the uncrossed-out bingo square in despair. Somewhere around Lynchburg I gave up all hope of ever seeing a cow again; on the road or on my dinner plate. We made it all the way to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and my cow-oriented brain shifted to other thoughts as we got caught up in the wedding festivities. Then, on our third day in North Carolina, Dad took my brother and me to a science museum/petting zoo while Mom went to a special pre-wedding brunch. Of course the GPS gave us the wrong directions and we got off the highway three exits too late and had to backtrack through Raleigh, but we got there nonetheless. We looked around the museum for a while and then headed out back to the petting zoo, which had llamas, an otter, and two cows. I woke the sleeping cows up when I screamed. “Cows! Cows! Cows!” I yelled. I immediately took pictures of them and crossed a cow off on the bingo sheet. This trip marked the beginning of my love of cows, and I continued to yelp every time I saw one. Walking through a toy store, seeing a cow stuffed animal was the highlight of my day. All in all, my family has taken some pretty extreme measures to get a look at a cow, even a fake one. My family once drove up a hill so steep I thought the car would fall backward just to sit amongst the fabric cow lawn ornaments adorning the stretch of grass along a busy road. We were driving through Ottaquechee on our way to Woodstock, Vermont when we came across a trading post on top of giant hill comparable to any small mountain, minus the chairlift. I was driving the family minivan along the winding road that had an exceedingly high speed limit of 45 miles per hour. The sharp turns made it difficult to drive at any consistent speed, so I nearly came to a full stop each time the road twisted. Knowing my love for cows, my parents had no objection to gunning the car up the hill so that we could look at them. The engine roared as we made it over the crest and saw a huge expanse of the greenest grass I had ever seen. My dad and brother stayed in the car while Mom took pictures of me lying on the grass alongside my favorite four-legged farm animal. Although I do love cows, I have no intention of ever owning one or getting very close to one. I prefer to admire them from a distance, even if it means pulling off the side of the road near a Massachusetts rest stop to take pictures. Since the North Carolina ordeal, I haven’t gained any newfound respect for cows. I suppose I just enjoy watching them and seeing how content they are with everything. They really have nothing to worry about; it seems to me that they stand around and eat grass all day and occasionally get milked. William Lyon Phelps once said that “if happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow,” and I believe that he is right. Maybe there is something to gain from following a cow’s example of ease and leisure, but for now, I’m content with the cows in pictures and in my stomach.