The Lines are Drawn and the Boundries are Set

Written by Vicki Turnbloom

My grandma and grandpa had a large dairy herd in Star Valley, Wyoming. They worked and played hard together. They had a very good relationship and had a lot of love and respect for each other. Grandma was a sweet, loving and gentle lady. Barely 5' in her stocking feet withe not much insulation. She was small in stature but large in character.

She could be very feisty and as kids we learned many things from her. She taught that disagreements needed to be forgotten, that "The more you stir cow manure the worse it stinks:. Part of grandma's responsibilities were taking care of the calves. At onld mix them each a bucket of some milk concoction and then tried to keep track of which ones that had been fed so they only got one helping. Now calves didn't understand they could only get on share so she needed an equalizerc she had a piece of a 2x4 she would smack a greedy calf right across the head to get their attention and make them tow the line. There was one calf that insisted he get more than one serving. This calf was very determined to get a second bucket of warm milk and in it's hurr y tipped tha bucket out of grandma's hands spilling milk everywhere, grandma was not happy to have the milk spilt on her and wasted. she gave him a real scotch blessing, but he fust ignored her and tried to get to the bucket again. Grandma was watching him and saie, "oh no you don't!" and with both hands took that 2x34 and smacked the calf right between the etyes. The calves knees buckled and he went to the ground, rollin over onto it's side. We all thought the calf was dead, but a few minutes later the calf got up and walked away in a daze tothe other side of the corral. I learned a couple of things from that experience, the obvious one, don't mess with grandma, the other one, lines are drawn and boundaries are set.

When Dean and I were first married we bought a darling 2 bedroom single wide mobile home. It had the prettiest turquoise shag carpet, I loved that carpet. I was fanatical about keeping that carpet vacuumed and clean. I loved being married, I loved keeping that little house cute and clean and having meals ready when Dean got home from work. I also loved moving the furniture around seeing how different and cute I could make things. I moved the furniture often in all the rooms tryihng to get the best arrangement and getting the most out of the small space. One nighat about 3 in the morning the phone rang. The only phone was in the kitchen, and Dean jumped out of bed from a sound sleep to run down the hall, instead, he ran right into the wall, then he truned and ran into a second wall, he then turned to me and said (and I'll paraphrase rather than quote,) "How in the heck do I get out of here?" with the irritating sound of the phone still ringing, I just pointed to the doorway. After he got to the phone and took care of that problem, he came back and said to me in a very adamant and firm voice, "Don't you ever move this bed again!" Now I could tell there was no room for discussion, he felt very strongly about this. A line had been drawn and a boundary had been set. Being the intelligent and loving wife that I was and am, I just simply said, "okay".

Sometime later while we were still living in that cute home, early on a Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church, I heard and felt a huge explosion, it shook the house and rattled the windows like nothing I had ever experienced before. I ran down the hall way to find Dean. I found him standing by the front door demanding to know who had locked the door. In a few seconds many things ran through my mind, why did it matter that the door was locked or WHO had locked it when we had just had an explosion that head rocked the entire house? Then I noticed a round spot in front of the door, where that beautiful turquoise shag carpet had been, there was now a smoldering, melted mass of stuff. I was having a hard time comprehending what had happened until Dean began to explain. He had decided to wake up our good friends that lived right next door, by throwing and M-80 out our front door. For those of you that many not know what a m-80 is let me explain.
"M-80s are a class of large firecrackers, traditionally, M-80s were made from small red cardboard tube approximately 1 1/2 inches long and 9/16-5/8 inches in diameter, with a fuse coming out of the side, holding approximately 3 grams of explosive. Despite instructions to only ignite the product on the ground (many M-80s even have the words "do not hold in hand" written on the tube) many users attempt to light and M-80 while holding it, then throw it before it explodes."

Having a lit M-80 in his hand and finding the door locked was very disturbing for Dean, and only having a few seconds to make a decision, he had dropped the M-80 on the carpet. However, he was quick to point out the blessing of getting the door open before the explosion went off in the house so the concussion did not remove all the windows from our home. And later I was grateful for that blessing. However, after I grasp the information I had been given, in a very adamant and firm vioce, I said, ""Don't you ever light a firecracker in the house again?" Now he could tell there was no room for discussion, He knew quickly that I felt very strongly about this. A line had been drawn and a boundary had been set. Being the intelligent and loving husband that he was and is, he agreed. To this day we have not had any moment of contention brought about by moving beds or lit firecrackers in the house.

Dean and I have had some tough times, with physical illness, with finances and with raising kids. I don't believe there is anything that will test your relationship like raising kids. We didn't get the memo on how hard it would be to raise kids and the instruction books left a lot to be desired. We made some mistakes, fortunately our kids survived them. When our family was young one of the the first boundar8ies we made as a family was name calling, Dean and I have never called each other a name in anger, our parents didn't and we followed their example. We did do some things right. We had a family home evening and we invited "Thumper from the movie Bambi, he taught the kids "if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all" and we had the picture of Bambi on the fridge for many years, We wanted them to carry on the 'no name calling' tradition.

Share this...