August 8th, 2006

Hay!

I mean: Hey! I had to make a sentence with the word "hay" in it as a fun little writing exercise!

Except for the curiously eroding Internet English-skills-misuse of the word as an interjection (which I ironically exemplified above), there aren't that many sentences using the word "hay" that don't involve barnyard animals. Now, please don't get me wrong, I haven't got anything against barnyard animals per se; in fact, I once loved a donkey as a brother(1). But I wanted to be different and unique (see, it's something of a mandate), so I avoided the horses, donkeys, cows, bulls, pigs, dromedaries, and mules, and instead pulled in that venerable cliché, "Make hay while the sun shines."

Great, sure. But then I had to stop and reflect on the fact that I didn't have a clue what it even meant! Such was the difference in experience between my generation (the real Gen-X-ers, but bloody hell don't get me started on that) and generations before mine, that the phrase still has meaning for. So I looked it up and discovered that it is a simple little parable. Basically, to take advantage of a situation while it still presents itself. Oh, okay, I can dig it.

Other phrases with the same (or similar) meaning, but are more common to people of my age, ethnocentricity, and region:

And I am sure there are more, but this is good enough to make the point.

Hmm ... except how exactly does one make hay? I had always thought that one makes it by, um, just sitting around and watching it grow. Right? Well, time to go back to the Internet, isn't it? :-)

And what did I find? Well, it's like just about everything else: The devil is in the details. Here's what I mean:

  1. Let hay grow
  2. Cut hay down
  3. Let hay dry out
  4. Roll or bundle somehow into bales
  5. Wait until winter
  6. Give hay to livestock as fodder

See, such is my white-bred suburban upper-middle-class life-of-ease upbringing, that it has taken me until my 30s to even know how hay is "made". I mean, I know how (and why) to wire capacitors in parallel, or write a script to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, or write out the circle-of-fifths chord progression starting in E-flat ... but if someone told me to slop the pigs or feed the cows the hay, I'd need instructions.

So it's more than just my generation, it's also my regional experience. People like me, those who grew up in North Vancouver in the relative lap of luxury going to schools with other not-exactly-rich, but semi-spoiled suburban kids, infuriating many of our teachers (and a few of our less-privileged classmates) with our lifestyles and arrogance (and ignorance), just didn't learn anything about growing up amongst the four-legged beasties of the world, and keeping our heads and limbs clear of the thresher.(3)

And, finally, consider this: I told my wife that if there really is such a thing as Hell, and if I get sent there after I die, I will probably arrive at a farm. But you can be sure that somewhere in a parallel universe is a Brian who grew up on a farm saying the same thing about being part of the white suburban middle-class professional fodder class.

But what the hay ... er, hey!

(1) - It was a stuffed toy I unoriginally called Eeyore.

(2) - But the second mouse gets the cheese.

(3) - So while I may get on the case of "kids these days" about how ignorant they are, I must remember that everything here is relative: My friends of origin and I grew up pretty ignorant of the "real world" too. It's just all about where on the spectrum you happen to be.

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