by Christine Senter

Created on: May 31, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, my family and I went to my aunt's house for the 4th of July holiday weekend. We had planned a huge barbecue, set up a horseshoe pit, and had a special spot for all the fireworks to be displayed the night of the 4th.

As the women were preparing all the salads and side dishes for dinner, they decided to send us kids out to the garden to pick some fresh carrots. My aunt had nearly half an acre of garden, so the row of carrots was pretty long. Being kids, we didn't know how many carrots to pull, so we pulled them all. There were so many carrots that we needed to get the wheelbarrow to carry them all back to the house.

When we made it back to the house, my aunt nearly fainted at the sight of all those carrots. Most of the adults thought it was kind of funny, but they knew they had to do something to punish us for pulling them all. So, they decided that all of us kids had to eat all the carrots we pulled. We ate carrots until we thought they were going to come out our ears.

Since that time, I've never been real fond of raw carrots. To this day, I've only planted carrots in my own garden once, and most of those stayed in the ground until the following year. I did learn a valuable lesson that day, when you send a group of kids out to the garden, be very specific as to what you want and how much.

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