There are many reasons to marry a rural-raised minister’s kid (RRMK). Here are a few of them
-Poverty (by Canadian urban standards) is what they know. We are far from poor now, but my hubby, who is a RRMK, still thinks getting a new pair of running shoes is SO EXCITING! (OK, they were on sale.) Laurence just loves his neon yellow Sauconys — racing from house to car to school to car. Move over Lauryn Williams.
-Living in a house that is falling down around them doesn’t alarm them. Heck, at the pastoral charge in Shannonville, the manse literally had bats in its belfry! I would love to tell you that, in our case, this means that Laur can fix just about anything. Nope. That would be a job for the Manse Committee — save that we don’t live in a manse.
-A rural-raised minster’s kid, especially if he’s from a large family of scrappy boys, will eat anything and will eat it with gusto. You know to grab as much as you can while the platter is going around, because there won’t be seconds. “Haute cuisine” is only of interest to him if the fashion is “abondant.” (This has its downside; more on that later.)
-RRMKs have GREAT stories! My goodness, had they been a city family, the child and animal welfare authorities would have been called in. Not because the kids or animals were being abused — but because, how to say this, the kids were free range and the other-than-human animals often lived in the house. It wasn’t their parents that accompanied the Steven kids to school. Nope, it was Joe their crow. More on this crow in a later column.
-But the best reason to marry a rural-raised minister’s kid, (or a farm boy?): Farmers, especially livestock farmers, appreciate “largeness.” They know that the more something weighs, the more value it has.
When I met my husband, I weighed 30 pounds less than I do now. Laur really liked me because I was friendly and smart. (Now there’s a geeky pick-up line for you.) But, because I was underweight, well, the phrase “Skinny Cow” may now be a good marketing term for Nestles, but back in the country, the term was “cull cow.” Eek! He could hardly wait to introduce me to his favourite shop, “Meatland.” (I kid you not.) And if ever he says, “Those pants make you look beefy!” that’s high praise.
Alas for him, it doesn’t cut both ways. While I like my cats chubby, I like my husband svelte; my cats get turkey-chunks cat food; my hubby gets tofurkey — at least at home. (For some reason, he loves to go out to eat.) And to his credit, my hubby weighs 10 pounds less that when we met some 37 years ago. He’s got 10 more pounds to go, according to him, and he figures at his current rate of weight loss, he should achieve his ideal weight by age 95.
But should he ever want to trim down faster by exercising more, there are endless possibilities at the Parkside Older Adult Centre — over and above “my” Keep Fit, Yoga, and Zumba classes. These include line dancing for beginners, square dancing, clogging AND belly dancing! (Hey, belly dancing by men is all the rage in Istanbul, Turkey!)
But I have this funny feeling that Laur’s involvement at Parkside might be focused on playing pool, which he loves and used to play regularly in his youth. He was a pretty good player back in the day; his nickname was Pool Hand Lou.
Mind you, it’s been a few decades. Still, he might be able to distract his competitors with his bright shiny runners. And wait til he hears about Turkey Tuesdays.
Jan Carrie Steven is a volunteer with Cat Adoption Trust Sudbury (CATS) and the co-ordinator of Small Things: Cats & Books. For more information, go to www.smallthings.ca.
