I experience a sharp, sinking sensation when Roy Scheider's wife in "Jaws" asks a neighboring sunbather, "When will I be an islander? How long do I have to live here to become an islander?" She is dealt the brutal truth: Never. You're not born on Amity Island, you're never going to be an islander.
No! It can't be true. It can't be that stark of a reality. I've lived in the country for almost 11 years now. While I didn't come from New York like the characters in "Jaws," I did come from the hectic, hip, happenin' city lights of Uptown in Minneapolis to a town of ... well, I'm not sure we have a town.
Anyway, I'm on this little farm with lots of animals and a garden and a dirt road and a long winding driveway and a rusty, misshapen mailbox and three old cars on blocks and a tower of hay and a UPS guy I know and ... I'll still never be an islander.
Maybe it's not just a lifetime of farming, it's the generations of farming that give my rural neighbors (do you call them neighbors?) that mumbling, thrifty speech and slow, confident shuffle. It's like deciding at 30 to become a ballerina -- you can't get kicked onto the farmer island for all the soybeans in -- wait, I'm not even sure they are soybeans. That's my whole problem.
You want to hear the dead giveaways of an eternal newcomer? This list only scratches the surface:
I keep mixing up "hay" and "straw." A mistake like this could result in $1,000 of excess bedding and only a couple of weeks' worth of food for the winter.
Same with "foot" and "hoof." I still don't know what to call it with chickens. Feet? Talons?
I wear muddy boots to Minneapolis, hoping someone will notice that I'm a country girl. A real country girl would wear her proper church shoes to the city.