Bovine Dreams

I really do want to be a Dairy Princess. I am a little past the appropriate age but I dreamt about it even before I started milking cows. It was the practical kind of princess that resonated with me. I wasn't into unicorns and Cinderella. I loved the real-life princess who showed cows at the State Fair and got blue ribbons for taking extra care to wash the white parts of her beloved Heifer with bluing. The girl who was in high school and was beautiful without make-up and wore a gold locket with a picture of her boyfriend in it. Who wouldn't want to wear a sash and a tiara and wave at the crowd from a convertible in the parade? People lining the main street on a summer afternoon waving back at you for no other reason than you waved first. Sweating in a new dress better suited for a prom or debutante cotillion and feeling the August sun burning the back of your neck. I waved at this young woman year after year in between scooping up fireballs and dum-dums from the street. She waved, I waved.