Herd

Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:

I stood there halfway up the hill, hands outstretched and straight as a board. I locked my back up as straight as I could, chest puffed out. I acted like a pole, just like Don Lowenstein, my boss at the time, told me to. I didn’t move. I held my ground. Somehow, I didn’t die.

I started working for Don the summer after my junior year of high school. He ran a computer software business in town. Being a computer nerd, I thought it was a match made in Heaven. Don’s business was small. He had a business partner, Perry, and an administrative assistant. (I forgot her name) I was summer help, primarily focused on filing and doing clerical work. I also herded cattle.

“Block him, Gary!” Don called out. I allowed my locked-up knees to bend as I shuffled to the right, blocking the path of an 800 lb. bull wandering away from the herd.

Don’s second business was a cattle farm. He lived out in the country with his wife and children. He had dozens of head of cattle, and most people in town knew that when Don slaughtered one it was worth having his phone number. There’s nothing like a fresh steak or hamburger.

Cattle graze in a pasture right down to the dirt. They’ll lick up every blade of grass. Even if they miss, their hoofs will trample anything left away. You have to move cattle from one pasture to the next for this reason. At some point you have to give the pasture time to grow back or the cattle will starve.

The bull backed off. He just slowly turned around and rejoined the rest of the herd as they moved on to the second pasture. A gravel road separated the two pastures. The road was at the bottom of a hill, much like running through a small valley. The people from the office, and I think a couple of Don’s kids, all stood half-way up the hill and held our cruciform positions acting as nothing more than a guide to shoe the bovine off to their next location.

Cows are stupid. They look at the cow in front of them and follow it. They don’t break form. If one does, all it takes is a goofy-looking brat weighing nothing more than a buck forty-five and standing no taller than 5’8” to wave his pasty-white arms towards the rebel and, sure enough, he or she will find another cow to follow again. They don’t try to break through obstacles.

Imagine the ridiculousness of that conclusion. 800 lb. bull. 145 lb. human. His nuts were as big as softballs, there is more muscle in his neck than there is in my whole body and, oh, by the way, there were little horns poking out of his skull. He could have lowered his head and walked straight through me. It wouldn’t have been hard and I definitely would have seen an emergency room that day. Maybe a morgue.

People are stupid, too.

We wander down the same gravel road, one foot in front of the other, watching the ass of the person in front of us all just following the same path. If somebody gets the notion that we somehow were made for more than simply following the herd until the end of our life, we get scared and run back. What scares us? The vast majority of the time it’s something we irrationally fear. Doesn’t matter that we are bigger than it is. Doesn’t matter that we could run away with nothing to stop us. Nobody REALLY wants to attempt to stir up the herd, after all. Nobody really wants to challenge the status quo or discover their true self-worth or acknowledge the fact that maybe – just maybe – they have a purpose in life that extends well-beyond taking one more step towards death. Nobody considers that they have the power to change the world. They see an obstacle, stop, turn around and march on.

Did that bull think he could charge through an obstacle less than a quarter of his size? No. Why? He had no idea how much power he had.

Do you?

…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!