I had just the best Man Week.
I’m a male, age 50-something, and this week I got to do two things most men my age love:
--I sat on my ass, ate popcorn, drank beer, and watched great basketball on television (the Final four championship game was freakin’ awesome, dude!)
--I also got to talk--as the saying goes-- “Like a Sailor.” I got to use the word “teat” pretty much whenever I wanted. You see, a friend of mine who owns a small farm had to go out of town and I volunteered to milk a goat for him. In all the years I’ve been around farms and done farm chores, I’d never milked an animal before. This week I learned my way around a teat. I developed finesse at gently squeezing a teat. Like a Zen Master, I became One With a Teat.
Teat teat teat.
You think handling a teat is easy? I suggest you think again. It took me hours of patient meditation to learn the technique of the teat pinch-off, the teat squeeze. At first I fumbled awkwardly and very little milk flowed. I worried that I would be kicked out of The Farmer Man Club for reasons of teat ineptitude. It was finally my wife Leah who gave me the advice that led me down the path toward a full pail of milk and a contented (and relieved) goat-friend. “Relax,” Leah suggested. “Don’t be so tense.”
Then Leah gave me the best advise of all:
“Try chanting,” she said.
It felt a little weird, chanting “Om Mani Padme Hum, Om Mani Padme Hum” to a goat, but the words worked their magic. I chanted in a deep and guttural Tibetan Monk-like voice, and in no time at all both milk-er and milk-e were bathed in the sweet light of man/animal enlightenment. A veritable jet-stream of milk emerged from the goat’s teat and splashed into the milking pan with a satisfying zing.
I had mastered the teat.
The world was in perfect balance.
Life was good.
