I'm thankful for detasseling. Without it, we wouldn't have our super species hybridized seed corn and the world would probably just stop existing. And by world I mean Nebraska. But luckily, we have detasseling AND therefore our super species hybridized seed corn. And Nebraska.
Read the wikipedia article on detasseling and ignore the part where it talks about riding thru the corn field on a detasseling carrier. The detasseling carrier is a ploy to trick kids into signing up, build false hope, and cruelly motivate those in the depths of despair and on the brink of heat-stroke-exhaustion-foot-blistered-corn-rashed death.
"Alright kids, we only have 500 more blocks (that's 2,000 rows of corn...) to complete on this field and then we just have one more field left today! I just called down to farmer Joe and he says there might even be carriers!"
There are never carriers. The idea of carriers sucks. And the field supervisor sucks.
BUT. Nevertheless, detasseling IS a rite of passage. And I did it for at least 3 summers. And I earned money and have tons of stories to tell. And both of my eyes...I was always afraid of slicing my eyes on a corn leaf.
So now, when I'm an old grandma, I can sit the grand kids down and talk about my days in the corn fields of Nebraska, earning $6.25 an hour while braving knee-deep feedlot runoff and fighting thru pivots blasting water with fire-hydrant force. All in the name of super species hybridized seed corn. And Nebraska.
Have a great day :-)
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