I’ve been telling this story off and on for years. I told it again today then I started thinking about a deeper meaning to the story. I decided it was really a story about trust.
At whatever time you are learning your multiplication table, I needed to get my tonsils taken out. This was the T&A operation, tonsils and adenoids, which used to be so common to us children of the 50s. I do not remember a whole lot of explanation as why I was going to the hospital except it was to make me better. I was checked in, and placed in a room with 4 other boys. The young man across from me had some sort of condition that made him spasm frequently. I did not know this, but what I did know was that he had just had his tonsils out. In my child’s mind I made the intuitive leap that after my tonsil operation I would be like that spastic, little boy.
I have always told the story in regards to the silliness of kids and irrational fears. Reflecting on it today I decided it was really a story about trust. I trusted my mother, and I suppose I trusted the doctor to some extent that if I needed to be like the spastic young man to be better, so be it. Of course, children have extraordinary trust in people in positions of authority. They have even more trust in those that love them. Without it the human child would have a hard time getting to adulthood. But still…
I do not remember when I told my mother of the fear that I had, a few days or few weeks afterwards. Best I remember, she said something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you were scared.” She then went on to pooh-pooh my fears.
So it goes.
My grandmother had an old milk cow she called Ole Heart. Ole Heart helped my grandmother make ends meet. She would sell excess milk and butter to various folks around town that preferred their milk straight from the cow rather than the supermarket. She would get a calf from Ole Heart once a year that she raised for beef and put in her freezer. She and the cow had been together many years.
As told to the 22 year old me… 
A cat was napping on the railroad tracks. A train came along and chopped off his tail. He turned around to see what had happened to his tail. While he was inspecting the damage another train came along from the other direction. It chopped off his head.