When I was around fifteen I was, as all fifteen year olds, sharp as a tack. I knew everything, and i was tickled to tell you all about it.

Dad was probably annoyed as hell, but I was unperturbed. Then, one day, dad came home and said “I have a job for you, if you want to make a couple dollars”. I was always looking for something to do to make some cash, and with my brains, I could do anything, right? Anyway, on a cold saturday dad drops me off at a friend’s farm and I find that the job is mucking out horse stalls.

Not having a friendly watersprite, I pick up a potato fork and start digging.

Now, this guy has just purchased this farm, and he wants to keep horses in these stalls. They were previously occupied by sheep. And ducks. And at one time had been used as a coop. I can tell, you see, because of the geologic layers of shit.

About two hours into the first stall I discover it has a concrete floor, but it’s damned near three feet down. A ten by twelve stall, theee feet deep in shit. At the bottom, the chicken shit has been subjected to the nastiness and pressure for so long, that the moisture has all leached out of it and it’s the consistency of pudding. At some point I have to stop using the fork and move on to a coal shovel, and it’s so liquid that you have to very carefully carry the shovelful of liquid shit to the wheelbarrow. I must have made two hundred wheelbarrow trips to a spot behind the barn.

When I managed to get the first stall to bare concrete I hosed it down with a hose and moved on to the next stall.

I had been mildly sick to my stomach al during the first stall, but by the time I stuck that fork into the shit in the second stall I was wrecked. I fell to my knees and vomited, puking up stuff I don’t even remember eating. Unable to even bring myself to wipe my vomit-encrusted face on my filthy clothes, I just let it drip and shoveled and shoveled and wheeled and wheeled.

At the end of the third stall it was almost dark. I hosed out the floor, and left three stalls at least moderately ready for animals aghain, and I had a pile of shit about a quarter mile away that would fertilize roses for a hundred years. I had had the dry heaves so many times that my stomach felt like it was in my throat. My clothes stank and I was filthy. The farmer hooked up a hose from the house to warm water, and I washed off outside, putting on a pair of blue and white striped railroad bibs which I have to this day.

I sat in the farmhouse and drank bitter coffee until I warmed up, then the farmer drove me home.

It never dawned on me dad was teaching me a valuable lesson.