A Whole New World | Teen Ink

A Whole New World

March 3, 2017
By Ashlee18 BRONZE, North Collins, New York
Ashlee18 BRONZE, North Collins, New York
2 articles 2 photos 0 comments

When I was eight years old I was introduced to a whole different world. A world of competition and politics, a world of new friends that become family. I was introduced to the world of 4-H. 4-H had been a family tradition for quite some time. My grandpa showed cows, my dad showed pigs, my aunt showed lambs and pigs and my uncle showed cows and pigs. My first year in 4-H I followed in the footsteps of every other person in my family, I raised a pig. My first pig started as a tiny piglet as white as snow. She was the cutest piglet I had seen in my whole eight years of life, when it came time to picking a name for the tiny piglet my eight year old self chose the name Peaches. Why I would choose to name an animal that would later be turned into bacon after a sweet juicy fruit is beyond me. But I had the time of my life raising Peaches for four months. I would wake up extra early every morning before school and ride my bike down to the barn to feed Peaches, when I would get home from school I would hop back on my bike and peddle furiously down to the barn, anxious to see her again. I spent those four months bathing Peaches, teaching her how to walk along side me and follow me to the pond behind the barn where we would go swimming. Peaches quickly became my best friend. When August rolled around and it was time to sell Peaches at the fair I was heartbroken. I didn’t want to loose my best friend. A week before the fair, the head of the 4-H paid our farm a visit. It was one week before the fair–after I had already gone through all the requirements to enter in the fair–that I was told I couldn’t take Peaches to the fair. In that moment I was so happy because this meant I got to keep my best friend–or so I thought. My dad later told me that Peaches was going to end up going in our freezer, that meant I couldn’t keep her. A couple months after we sent Peaches off to the farm in the sky I found out that the whole time I raised Peaches, grooming her as a girl and bathing her with the girliest of shampoos, I was really insulting her masculinity. Peaches was really a dude.



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