A typical day de-tasseling

Most people think that de-tasseling is really hard. To some extent, yes it is… But not nearly as bad as most people crack it up to be. Sure, you do spend hours and hours walking. Sure you get muddy and sweaty. Yes, it’s hot…. But really it’s not that bad. Here’s a typical day on parkview bus.

People start showing up around 5:00 AM…. By 5:15 AM all the over zealous first years are piled into the back of the bus. Around 5:18 AM all the people who know better show up and take all the remaining seats. At 5:29 AM the people who slept through their alarms show up. They have to sit by the shy people who have seats to themselves. Dan starts the bus at 5:32 AM and we head out. In between then and 6:13 AM is a lot of snoring, a few loud crashes and some “would you please just SHUT UP!”‘s… 6:16 AM Dan opens in a word of prayer and Heidi(totally awesome bus assistant that has prolly broken every bone in her body before) reads off squads. 6:19 AM everyone piles off the bus and finds what squad they’re in. 6:29 we start our first round of the day in our rain gear. 7:45 AM we finish the first round and get told to pull faster by our fearless bus assistant. This gets repeated with different admonishments every time. Like such as “you need to pick more tassels!” “My grandma could go faster than you!” “keep up the good work!” “Elizabeth I don’t want to see you doing that ever again!” “watch your suckers(corn that is shorter the the rest) people!” etc. 10:06 AM and people start whining about how long the rows are, how much their feet hurt, how stupid greensnap(corn that has been blown over) is… 10:28 AM Dan gets so sick of it… that we get to have a 15 minute break! yay! 13 minutes later Heidi calls the 2 minute warning and we all get off our water jugs.  10:48 we’re back in the field. Bill(Mr. Monsanto, farmer dude(Resident monsanto representative/inspector)) looks at our rows and says stuff to us in his minnesotan accent.  1:09 PM we are finally done with the whole field. To every ones dismay, we have another field to do. On the bus ride there, we eat lunch, and play innumerable pranks on poor unsuspecting people. After one round of the next field we get to go home. There is much relieved laughter, passing around of cell-phones and “would you please be quiet, I’m on the phone”‘s. Dan sings a made up rap over the intercom about how much fun de-tasseling is, and how if you have a bug on your face he’s gonna smash it. 3:56 PM we finally make it to the parkview parking lot. another ten minutes later and everyone is gone… except for that one kid who always sleeps on the bus over night…. The next day we do it again see! De-tasseling isn’t so bad!