Being Volunteered to Shovel-out the Barn

So, my wife and I have a mutual understanding: we don't volunteer each other to shovel-out the barn.

When I was twelve, in the land of the Kamas Valley Utah 84036, I was attending a barbecue at the home of my aunt's father-in-law, who also happened to be my mom's long-standing boyfriend at the time (but that's a story for another time - or maybe a book), and my mom's boyfriend (or my aunt's father-in-law, or my uncle's father - whichever you prefer) had an adult son who owned horses and I'll call him Ross. It was late spring, maybe early summer, and his horses had been kept in a barn with individual stables throughout the winter months.

Ross: (unaware that I was within earshot) "I can't stay long."

Mom: "Why's that, Ross?"

Ross: "I need to go shovel the horse [manure] out of the barn where I keep my horses. And I don't want to do it. I'd like to find somebody who I could pay to do it for me." I listened as he described to my mom how the [manure] was 8 to 10 inches deep, hard, crusted and would take a pickax to loosen before shoveling it out.

Mom: "Oh, my son Bryan would love to do it. He could use a little extra cash."

My mouth dropped to the golden-shag carpet in the single-wide trailer of my aunt’s father-in-law or my mom’s long-standing boyfriend. My mom had just volunteered me to do a job without asking me if I wanted to do it. I was absolutely appalled. Was there a rule in The Parent Manual (of which I was not allowed to see at the time - and come to think of it, still have not had the opportunity to consult as a parent) that parents could volunteer their children to do things without asking for their consent. I felt violated. I felt striped of my liberty and rights and justice for all. I felt the shackles lock around my wrists and ankles. I was doomed.

I walked into the kitchen where this conversation was taking place and looked at my mom with dumbfounded amazement. "Did I just hear you say that "Bryan would love to do something?” I watched them exchange glances at one another conveying that they were plotting against me.

Mom: "Ross needs someone to shovel-out his barn and I told him you would do it."

With a repressed smirk Ross says, "I'll pay ya' for it. I've got two horses and after they've been in the barn all winter long the stalls need to be shoveled out."

I didn't want to do this job. I had no interest in making money by spending an entire Saturday chiseling through rock-hard horse dung. And as my mom read my face, she knew what I was thinking.

Mom: "I just thought you could use a little extra money and that this would be a perfect job for you."

Excuse me? What is her definition of the word "perfect?" It certainly wasn't the same as mine.

Now kids in general don't like to work and I have five of them that remind me of this true fact each and every Saturday. But what ripped through my poor-tender-little heart the most was that my mom had just sold my soul without my consent. She had volunteered me to shovel-out the barn without consulting me first. Her actions had crushed my fragile self-esteem and cut me to the core (overdone adjectives used for effect).

While it's true that each time my first grade teacher announced that someone's mom would be needed for our field trip to the Zoo or to bake cookies for the upcoming Halloween party, my hand always shot up faster than a speeding paintball. However, for the record, let's establish that I was young, foolish, immature and naive about the concept of consent before commitment.

From that day on, my mom and I had an understanding that neither of us would volunteer the other to shovel-out the barn. We had to get the consent from each other before a commitment could be made to another person. And my wonderful, fantastic, awesome mom never violated this understanding again.

Then I got married and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. And one day I came home from work and my wife informed me that she had volunteered the two of us to be members of a missionary committee in our church.

Bryan: "Sit down here on the couch for a minute, dear-sweet wife. Let's talk about horses and shovels and pickaxes and barns."

From that day on, there have been no barn-shoveling commitments in our household without a fully written and notarized consent.