Tag Archives: life

Oklahoma culture

I Hate Snow

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My Grandma, in her dress and tennis shoes.

by Joey Rodman

I grew up in a pretty straight-laced family. My mother would put my hair in pin-curls and make me wear the whole puffy dress, tights, patent leather Mary Janes getup for every school picture. She would claim that it was the one day a year I looked “like a normal little girl.”

My friends and in laws have often asked me how someone like me came out of the family I did. One of my friends was a little unnerved at the idea that I even had parents, much less that they were very conservative and did things the “socially acceptable” way. I have an explanation though. Recently I got some old pictures of my grandmother in the mail. The first one in the stack? Grandma in a dress and tennis shoes. It was then that I remembered her telling me as a child “never wear shoes you can’t run away in,” and I never do.  Maybe quirkiness skips a generation.

I really try to be normal. It’s hard. Sometimes my abnormality is cute, and other times it makes me the social pariah.  In elementary school I was more interested in architecture than Barbies. I remember being at my friend’s birthday party and she received a beautiful doll house. All the girls gathered around exclaiming, “Oh, it’s got a baby bed!” and “Lookit! The oven opens!”…my contribution to the conversation? “The dormer windows are nice!” Dead silence. Everyone in the room stopped and looked at me. My friend rolled her eyes and said “Joey, stop saying nerdy things,” and everyone uncomfortably picked up their chatter again. I wasn’t invited to any parties for a while.

I tell you this because I have a confession to make and I hope you don’t shun me for it.  I hate snow. I don’t think it’s pretty or magical or fun or exciting. I hate it. While most of my friends are taking their kids out sledding, making snow ice cream, building snowmen, or having snowball fights, I’m huddled up in the house praying for it all to go away. Snow is cold, messy, boring and a big inconvenience if you ask me. If it never snowed again I would be happy.

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Oklahoma culture

On Being a Bear

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by Joey Rodman

There was a time when my youngest would tell people that when she grew up, she was going to be a bear. She did not mean that she would dress up like a bear, or that she would be aggressive, or that she would marry someone and change her last name to “Bear”….she meant she would literally become a bear. If you pressed her a bit she would tell you that she was going to be a “Brown Bear” like in Eric Carle’s book. She was 2.

I often became annoyed with people who would tell her that she could not, in fact, “be a bear” when she grew up. I felt like either she already knew this on some level and they were underestimating her intelligence, or she really did believe people could become bears and they were squashing her childhood wonder. I often battled back and forth between these two poles in my anger toward the idiots who would say “people can’t be bears.”  This was amplified by the fact that just about any of them would turn around a few minutes later and tell that she could be “whatever she wanted to be” when she grew up.

The child wanted to be a bear. I was not going to tell her she couldn’t. I was interested in finding out how she planned to do this.

She is now 7 and if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she will tell you that it is “a stupid question.”  Everyone knows, or should, that “…she is queen of the world. While she’s not technically ‘in office’ at the time being, her existence is not predicated on popular opinion of her political power. She is queen of the world. When she is older, everyone will realize this. Right now, we’re all too stupid to ‘get it’ and for that she pities us.”

She is told over and over by any adult around her (save her father and me) that she can’t “grow up and be queen of the world” because it’s not possible. There is no queen of the world. She will of course explain to them that not only is there a queen of the world, but they’re looking at her right now.

I tell you this because I think it’s a symptom of our bigger problem. Not only do we think that things are the way they are because they are “supposed to be that way” but we fail to imagine that anything will really ever drastically change. This type of willful amnesia annoys me the most.

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Homestead and Garden

2011 Ranch Hand Guide: #4. Ride The Horse in The Direction It’s Goin’

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It’s true.  Two summers ago I literally did not follow this rule; the horse went left and I went right…and down.  I did a complete flip (well, almost) and landed on the rock hard ground as dust billowed up around me.  My insides gelled together while I checked for feeling in my legs.  This rule is not really about horses, but rather the fact that our world is constantly changing; we need to make sure we are changing with it.

Julie on horseback
Here I am in the saddle where I am supposed to be. These are Judy's horses in Chickasha. It's almost certain that if I go for a visit, we are going to find time for a ride. Riding used to be scary too. But if I am going to keep up Judy, I knew I had to overcome my fear and move on.

The Seed

Change is constant.  Do you remember when you first encountered a new piece of technology for the first time?  A few years younger than I, my graduate school project partner insisted that the way to eject a disk from a Macintosh computer was to drag the disk to the trash.  Really.  Does that make sense?  No.  I know it doesn’t.  I was so very far out of my comfort zone on that day.  I eventually realized that this thing called the Internet might be sticking around for a little while, and I probably better get it figured out.

Germination

Change is constant.  My example of the change in technology over the years is just one tiny little blip on the world radar.  It’s true that just a few years after I watched the virtual disk drop into the virtual trash can and then watched the actual disk pop out of the computer, I was teaching others to create web pages.  But then the world as I know it changed again.  I moved wwaaaayyyy out into the country.  I could barely get an Internet connection.  WiFi?  Not out here!

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Homestead and Garden

2011 Ranch Hand Guide: #3. Some People Grin and Bear It. Other People Smile and Change It.

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I love my life out here on the ranch, but it is not without its hardships and disappointments.  Everyone has his or her burdens to bear, but the key to putting them behind you is what Rule #3 is all about: choice and attitude.

The Seed

During college a friend of mine once commented on my “always up” attitude.  He alluded to the fact that because my happiness always seemed so extreme that my sad times that he never saw probably had to be really, well, sad.  I think he must have just come from one of those freshman psychology courses and wanted to be the first to diagnose me.  It gave me reason for pause, and I waited for those “really sad times” to present themselves.  They never did.

Germination

Last summer I attended a luncheon with a group of ladies.  The hostess began our luncheon by reading “Complaining,” an excerpt from Wouldn’t Take Nothing’ For My Journey Now by Maya Angelou.  Every person listened intently as the final part of the passage was read:

“Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”

Complaining.  That’s what this rule is about.  When I got home I quickly created a little tile with our picture and this excerpt written on it.  I put it in my underwear drawer, so when I am getting dressed in the morning, I feel that tile.  It reminds me to be grateful for waking up to another day.

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Art, Homestead and Garden

2011 Ranch Hand Guide: #2. If You Can’t Sing – Dance

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"5th Grade Julie." Piano lessons, art, and even home-building was part of her life, or just down the road in the near future (1973-74).

Out here on the ranch there never seems to be enough time.  We are always tending to the animals, building something, or just performing the everyday maintenance that all homeowners have to do.  Somehow, and it’s not always easy, I make time for hobbies that enrich my life.  So rule #2 translates into “find a hobby you are good at and make time for it.”

The Seed

As a kid, I took dance and piano lessons outside of school, but I had an opportunity to explore sewing (the home economics/shop era) and art during school. I actually remember the advertisement for an art school that read “If you can draw this… you may have a future in art.” We had an empty lot across the street from our house, and I watched my mom start a garden there before it sold and a house was built on the land.  I worked summers in the home building industry with my step-dad.  I was exposed to a lot of different activities.  Exposure is important.

Germination

Just because we are exposed to different activities doesn’t mean we will have the opportunity to pursue those activities.  For example, it wasn’t until a co-worker introduced me to quilting and my Aunt Sally gave me a sewing machine that I had the opportunity to pursue sewing.   That happened over twenty years ago, and I am still making time for it.  I have found that I can look at something and figure out how to make it, but I have also found some success in designing my own interesting projects.  Now that I live on a ranch, I have my own space for a garden.  I am still learning the basics, but a friend talked me into enrolling in our local Master Gardener class.  What a learning experience!  I have realized that two of my favorite activities were merged in the creation of the Tag Rag, the gardening bandana I made that I wear every day in the summer.

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