they just bout called me stubby

Part 2

A Teacher Learns a Lesson

even babe had better sense than they did that day

       Part of my responsibilities as a student teacher was to teach students, some of whom had never had any experience at all of doing anything on a farm let alone drive a tractor, or even operate a shovel. As a student and depending on the specialty you had enrolled in, we the student teachers at ATI farm would tailor make a practicum or relevant work experience based on your specialty. So if it was livestock production you would spend time feeding and caring for cattle. It could be something as simple as stacking hay bales, to forking silage into feed bunks to grinding grain, and bagging it. If you were in crop production, time would be spent calibrating a field sprayer so you didn’t use too much herbicide or insecticide. Or you could be plowing and disking with a tractor, or possibly seeding grain with a tractor and a grain drill.

       The jobs were all varied and usually started with us figuring out just how much experience a student had before turning him or her, as the case may be, loose with power equipment that could easily harm others, or themselves, if left alone and in the wrong hands. I am usually pretty conscientious about safety , and in this one case left myself open to the no-no of no-no’ s.

     The soup du jour of the day as we liked to call it was spreading manure on a pretty cold winter day as most farmers like to do. Ideally if there is a fresh coating of snow on the ground you can more accurately spread the manure and not apply it to heavily so as it would run off and end up in a stream or in your neighbor’s yard. Also if it is freezing neighbors have a tendency to stay inside, so the smell associated with the manure is less of a problem. I had two very inexperienced women or actually just a couple of giggling girls, who really wasn’t taking this job very seriously and were offended by the smell and in reality , I had no idea exactly why they were there as they didn’t really show much interest in spreading manure with a tractor. This was a job they would have to embrace eventually in their field of study, but I guess on this cold wintry day this wasn’t really what they wanted to do. .

     I was having my fair share of trouble, as the chain that drove the manure spreader that ran off the power take off from the tractor kept jumping off the sprocket that drove the manure spreader and unloaded it. It was cold and I had gloves on and as I got off the tractor I asked if the girls were going to watch me put it back on and both seemed appalled at the idea of sticking my hands and especially theirs anywhere the manure would land, let alone standing in it, or getting any closer than the tractor to the smell. I just kind of shook my head seeing it was fruitless and then I told them not to touch anything, but I had left the tractor running.

    That was my mistake, as anytime you have intention of doing anything around the power take off from the tractor; you need to turn off both the tractor and the power take off. I had the power take off turned off, but left the tractor running, along with giggling  girls on the tractor, while I worked on the manure spreader. I had to remove the guard shielding the chain and the sprocket, and I had clumsily started the chain around the sprocket with my gloves when all of a sudden I felt a tug on my gloves and just that quick my hands were being pulled into the sprocket by the gloves and I could feel the sprocket and chain pinching my fingers as pulled back violently as I knew what was happening and I could lose my fingers very quick if I didn’t get my hands out of my gloves , first one hand popped free and then the other and as my gloves continued on through the chain and sprocket the gloves fingers had crease marks where my fingers used to be. I immediately turned and looked at the 2 girls on the tractor knowing sure well they had turned on the power take off without me knowing it. I asked who did it. They both confessed that they were just seeing what all the levers did.

    I told them it was cutting my damn fingers off you dumbasses. Then I asked them, what gave them the right to just play around with things. I admitted I wasn’t much smarter than them as I left the tractor running but still they both deserved the dumbass of the day award and need to remember why you don’t play with shit when you don’t know what it is for.

     They started crying and said they were sorry and yes I affirmed that for them and told them to both get the hell off the tractor and walk back to the barn as I was done with them for the day. They didn’t seem to have a problem trudging through the shitty snow as they walked the half mile or better in the snow back to the barn. The irony of the fact that I was trying to teach them something and it turned into a lesson for me, as after that I never assumed anything when it came to my safety and keeping my fingers intact. So far knock on wood I have done a pretty good job at keeping them there.

      No one ever said a word for me sending those girls back to the barn and I felt they had been shamed enough to not bitch about me being so rude to them, and in turn decided it was probably better that they just forget the whole incident. I think they also considered a career change after I suggested they needed to get their fat lazy asses off a tractor once in a while to figure out what was going on and if they didn’t they might as well find something else to do, as they were going to hurt someone. I was vicious and vile, but heck it was my fingers they just about took off. And sometimes tough love is the only love to contradict stupidity when it comes to safety. All three of us learned a big lesson that day. .