Don't Go in the Corn!

Yep, it’s that time again – time for me to issue my annual reminder against willingly wandering around in cornfields.

How many times do I need to say it? Walking through corn is just plain wrong! Do it often enough and one of these times you won’t come out the other end. Nor will you ever be heard from again. You’ll become one of those “Do you remember…” stories. Is that what you need to keep you from going into the corn, someone you know to be taken? Perhaps it is. Since you seem so unwilling to take my word on it.

The man who rents the field next to my mother’s house has planted corn there the last few summers. It wasn’t quite as bad this year. With it being so dry the corn isn’t near as tall as it was other years. So frickin’ what? I haven’t been there since it got to be waist high and I have no intention of returning until after it’s harvested. Call me paranoid if you choose but we’ll see which of us is still around once the corn starts swallowing people up.

I know you don’t believe me but corn is evil. The stalks that is. The ears are fine once they’re picked. In fact, I truly enjoy corn on the cob. When it’s not overcooked but that’s a different ramble. It’s only stalks en masse that present a problem. Doesn’t matter if they’re dried or green, they’re creepy. They move about, shifting at will. Oh not so much that you can actually catch them in the act. Just a teeny tiny bit now and then when you’re not looking. If you ignore them long enough you will be trapped, cut off from any avenue of escape and then you’re in for it. You may as well get it over with and kill yourself on the spot. Hey, better that than what’s in store for you if the corn gets you.

Don’t laugh. I’m dead serious here. But okay, don’t listen. Go wander through a cornfield in you must. All in the name of fun, right? Anyway, it’s been nice knowing you. Bet I’m your last thought as the corn closes in on you.

Just One Thing

Any of you who willing go out and wander through corn, as in corn mazes, are truly insane! What the hell is wrong with you people?

STAY OUT OF THE CORN!!!

The things that live in that realm do not, I repeat NOT, want you there, stomping around their domain. They don’t appreciate your presence one bit. And sooner or later, you better believe they ARE going to do something to remove you from a place no business being in to start with.

There. I feel better for reminding you. If you go out there, you do so at your own risk because you have been warned. And if we don’t hear from you ever again we’ll know you ignored me.

No Way

It’s October. Halloween. To some of you insane individuals that means corn mazes. What are you thinking? Seriously, are you nuts?

I grew up next to a corn field and I can assure you there are things in the corn. No, I’m not talking about the four legged furry kind of things. I’m talking about the other kind. The kind you can’t see. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They are. Stand there if you dare. Let it get quiet and you’ll feel them.

When I was a kid I was friends with the boy on the other side of the field. Never, even in the winter when the field was bare, did we cut through it to visit. Not in the spring when it was freshly tilled. Not when the corn was newly sprouted. The things in the corn stayed in the field no matter what the season. We always went all the way around the field. Always. His grandfather knew though we never talked about it. He rented the field to a local farmer who planted it in corn. One year he decided no more corn. He told the farmer to plant something else or the lease would not be renewed. After that the field was fine to walk in. Winter wheat, oats, soy beans anything other than corn and nothing. Whatever had been there with the corn was gone.

It wasn’t just field corn either. Jan, the woman I went to when I needed mothering lived down the hill from us. One year her husband decided to plant two huge fields of sweet corn. No one ever figured exactly why he did that. That’s just the way he was. The only thing to do was to sell it at the local farmers market. That was the only fun part about it.

I remember sitting in her kitchen, crying once the corn started to grow. Jan was like that. She didn’t laugh at me. She listened when I told her I was afraid for her to be there alone with the corn. I think I spent the whole summer at her house like I could protect her somehow. When the corn was ready to be picked I was youngest so I got to stay in the truck and count the ears instead of doing any of the picking. You should have seen me. I stayed dead center in the middle of the truck bed. Never did any part of me extend over the edge. Jan told me I didn’t have to help at all. She would have fixed it with my parents but again, I had to be there to watch out for her. Being the sweetheart she was Jan made sure her husband never put us through that again. Nope, no more corn planting there. Not even a few rows, just for them.

Anyway as I started out saying there are things in the corn that you can’t see. But they are there. Oh yes they most definitely are there. And they know exactly where you are within those mazes at every second. You are not safe because one of these times they will decide they are tired of you traipsing around and they will get you. So stay out of the corn.