Back to School... Ritual or Routine?

Think about it, rituals are far more fun than routines. Rituals have gravitas, they are solemn, often religious usually performed with dignity in a church or university. Routines not so much. Routines are just, well regular. Routines don't serve a special purpose, we just settle into them. Typically, they are like driving your car to the gas station and filling up.

Back to school season for my family is a ritual. We perform our ritual every year, it's like Black Friday. The grown ups are faithful and the kids are, let's just say, dutiful. We all get up early, eat breakfast together, then Mom takes pictures of the kids in all their back to school glory. New shoes, clothes, backpacks, lunch boxes, hairdos, the works.

Every year this day is the culmination of all our optimism for our kids' prospects. This new year my kid will... then you fill on the blank. And every year past kindergarten the kids blanch at the idea of posing under their school signs in front of their peers. Many of whom are waiting their turn for their mom's photo shoot.

Routine sets in the very next day. We fudge our wake up time and grab breakfast as we fly out the door. Or maybe it takes a couple of days to find a routine. After Mom takes those pictures school becomes  regular. Like waiting for the red light to turn green so we can all drive to McDonald's and order the usual.

What's the take away? Maybe, I should just try to embrace the wonder of the ritual of the hope of a daily blessing, and make sure Mom gets a picture so we remember how far we have come together.

Amazing! Incredible! Unbelievable! $18,000 for one goat!!!

I took my daughter to our first FFA goat auction. I was prepared to spend upwards of $500 for our goat. We looked over all the animals. There were sixty. We made notes on several. We registered for our bidding number. Wow, we are really going home with one of these critters.  It was fun.

A good friend with 17 years of FFA animal husbandry experience went with us to help us along. He warned us that competitive goats could go for as high as $4500. My eyes popped wide. Who pays that kind of money in a recession for a goat? Not many he assured me.

However, we were confident we could take home a good quality goat at a reasonable price and, yes, $500 was reasonable to us. If we didn't win tonight there were many more opportunities to come.

There were sixty goats to sell. I realized we could be here for a long time. We weren't.

The auction started. The pace was lightning fast. All the animals were sold in forty-five minutes. It went so fast that by the time our chosen goats were up they were way passed our bid before the auctioneer finished his first sentence of auction-ese. The last of the sixty baby goats was auctioned for $18,000.

Amazing! You say. Who would pay that much money for one goat? You could buy a new Harley for that! We learned, someone who really, really wants to win the state goat showing competition. It's like a beauty pageant for goats. Never mind top prize is only $12,000. Just let that news rattle around in your head for a moment.

Incredible! Experts say. The goat was what they called a wether goat. Which means he will not be a daddy goat. Umm, ever. He will be strictly for show.

Unbelievable! I say.