The Cow Ate My Homework

1. My Life is a Horror Story

Horror might be a bit strong. Should have gone with tragedy.

What drama king, you say to yourself. A total man-diva.

And yes, in normal circumstances, I'd totally agree with that assessment. Dude needs to get a grip, calling his life a horror story.

But trust me, I'm not freaking out over nothing right now. This is legit. A catastrophe of epic proportions.

My name is Caleb, and a cow really did eat my homework.

It's not a joke, not hyperbole, not exaggerated. And it's not made up.

It sounds made up. It sounds like some terrible excuse I came up with, ala the "my dog ate it" excuses that lame-ass high school students supposedly try to use as explanations for their missing assignments. I wish that were what is going on here with me. But it is not.

I am standing in the Future Farmers of America barn that is beside my high school. Like many other not overly ambitious seniors of the illustrious single-A institute of learning that is Dermont High School, I once chose FFA as my elective for the year. I could have gone with Life Skills, formerly known as Home Ec., and rumored to be actually difficult. Or with metal shop, the class for people who are not mildly terrified of melting things with a small blue flame. But I said sign me up for FFA, I'll farm a pig. How hard could it be.

Pigs are very lowkey. I mean just look at them. They sit in mud and eat garbage. Pretty hard to mess up. There should be nothing involved in caring for a pig that would be a cause of stress or difficulty for me. Certainly, farming a pig is not going to ruin my life or derail my whole high school career or, you know, prevent me from graduating somehow.

But here I am, on the first day of my last week of high school. And what should have been me coasting, totally stressless, is taking a terrible turn. The kind of terrible turn that really might get in the way of me graduating.

My pig is scarfing his kitchen waste down behind me like a-well a pig. And I stare in horror at a huge, black Angus big-butt steer scarfing down on something else in front of me. Something that is definitely not cow food. Something that once looked like a model of an ecosystem that was going to secure me a squeak-past-passing grade in science class.

I am frozen.

"Mmm, num num num. Excellent work, Caleb. I give it an A plus," he says through his full mouth. Or, he might as well.

I dive at the steer in desperation. Knowing that I am utterly screwed.