I never learned how to pick cotton. Nor tapdance. Nor birth babies. Nor spit watermelon seeds

[CatWoman]

in a spittoon.

I'm a complete and utter failure.

[HipChick]

1. I don't even know to how to go about collecting gubermint

subsidy...

[onehandle]

2. It's never too late to learn something new.

[CatWoman]

3. rofl

[mcar]

4. Apparently you haven't been listening to the "right" people

Perhaps there's still time.

In case it's necessary

[Politicalboi]

5. See what Gubermint Subsides did to Bundy

I wonder if he can pick cotton being so stupid and all.

[CatWoman]

7. the first time I saw a cotton field was a while back

in El Paso, Texas.

From seeing them on the plants, I would think picking it is labor intensive.

And monotomous.

And boring.

I'd like to see that jackass and others like him go to a camp where they have nothing to do but pick cotton.

[Art_from_Ark]

13. I saw my first cotton field during a school trip

to Southeastern Arkansas. The road was full of cotton bolls that had been blown by the wind. We got out of the bus and started collecting bolls, then we saw a cotton plant in a ditch and tried our hand at picking the bolls from the plant. It was a lot of work.

[CatWoman]

19. slavery here in the U.S. was on the wane

until the invention of the Cotton Gin....

[MohRokTah]

27. Yep, the explosion in demand for slaves came after the invention of the cotton gin.

Since the intensity of picking the seeds from the harvested cotton went away, vasts amounts of labor to pick the cotton was needed.

It wasn't until 1937 that the viability of manual cotton harvesting ended forever with the introduction of the Rust Cotton Picker, whose design lives on to this day.

[catrose]

20. add painful

it's not all soft

[LuvNewcastle]

41. Yes it is. The stiff part that holds the cotton in place

is rough on the hands. A cotton picker's hands would bleed from being stuck by that stiff part all day long. And that's not the worst of it. It takes quite a toll on the back. Laborers had to stay bent over all day to pick the cotton or they had to stay on their knees the whole time. Either way, it was terribly uncomfortable. And on top of all of that, they had to drag that sack around with them. Pretty often they had to pick 100 pounds of cotton to fill up a sack. Just imagine doing all of that in 95 degree heat with 90% humidity.

The reason I know about all of that is because my grandparents all grew up on farms here in Miss., and all of them raised some cotton to sell every year. They all told me stories about how terrible cotton farming was. I'm sure glad I never had to go through that. I always admired my grandparents so much because they survived all of that and grew up to be wonderful people. I never thought my parents gave their parents as much respect as they should have.

[LittleBlue]

6. Don't you wish you could?

Surely picking cotton beats spending every day outside a government office talking on your Obama phone.

[CatWoman]

9. as Tweety would say

HA!!!

[malaise]

8. Same here

and we don't sit on the 'cement' porch all day unless we're aborting our babies and sending our young men to jail.
One more failure - damn my entire family has failed.

[CatWoman]

10. When I was a kid, we used to sleep on the front porch

That front porch sure serves a lot of purposes

[gollygee]

12. He said aborting "young children"

not babies.

[malaise]

40. He's an ignorant racist fool

So how do we abort 'young children'?

[gollygee]

42. It's a mystery

One of the many parts of his bizarre bigoted rant that made me scratch my head.

[KeepItReal]

11. My forefathers on the plantation would be so disappointed in my lack of useful skills, also

What with me sitting in front of computers and talking fancy to people in suits all day to get a paycheck.

I share your shame CatWoman.

[eallen]

14. Um. The spittoon's aren't for watermelon seeds.

Just sayin'.

[CatWoman]

15. i know that

but in the movies.................

[Retrograde]

26. Yeah, everyone knows

(even us Yankees) know that you're supposed to spit the seeds off the back porch. If you're lucky, you'll get a vine growing, but up north they never got big enough to flower, much less set fruit.

The spittoon's for the juice from your chaw of tabakky, I think.

[LoisB]

16. You are not alone. I can't even run fast, dance or play basketball. I did see a cotton

boll though; my grandmother had one she kept in a vase.

[awoke_in_2003]

23. Can you jump? nt

[rickyhall]

17. I never learned to pick cotton either

And my grandparents had a cotton farm somewhere around Hillsboro, Texas until about 1970.

But I do like watermelon.

[socialist_n_TN]

18. I've done two out of four........

and I'm an old white commie. What went wrong Cliven?

[enki23]

21. There's still hope, so long as you know how to make chicken and waffles.

.

[kelliekat44]

24. Just had that last night....yummmm. nt

[CatWoman]

44. ENKI!!!!

[MohRokTah]

22. I can show you how to pick cotton

You mostly have to keep the harvester moving straight through the rows while enjoying the AC and listening to the stereo:

[pokerfan]

25. You are a failed negro

(His words, not mine.)

[Catherine Vincent]

28. Bundy agreed he may be a welfare queen

I guess he didn't catch that. LOL.

[arcane1]

29. "Cotton-pickin'" was a derogatory adjective when I was growing up in the early 70's in Virginia.

As in, "get your cotton-pickin' butt upstairs and clean your room!" or "are you out of your cotton-pickin' mind?" I don't even remember thinking anything of it. By 1980 or so it had faded from the vernacular.

But the first time I saw a cotton plant was 1999. From what I understand, it's not exactly a pleasant thing to spend all day picking. Definitely NOT some idyllic family-owned self-employed farmer career!

[Art_from_Ark]

33. I heard "cotton-pickin'" a lot when I was growing up, too

"Are you out of your cotton-pickin' mind?" seems like it was a popular expression in the South in those days.

[babylonsister]

30. Darling! Point taken! nt

[Demeter]

31. that's okay. I never learned how to defer to MEN.

You want to talk complete failure, that just about covers it. I don't even have the excuse of lesbianism.

[lovemydog]

32. They don't even teach it public schools

Darn those socialist educators.

[Solly Mack]

34. How do you live with yourself?

Oh, the humanity!

[Moonwalk]

35. Well, the implication is that if you're "negro" it should all come naturally to you....

Like being a slave

My head hurts from banging it against such stupidity....

[Jack Rabbit]

36. If you want to collect a government subsidy, you can start by . . .

. . . incorporating yourself.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

37. That's okay, I never did a rain dance....

But I've been on the warpath a few times.

[madaboutharry]

38. Hi Catwoman

How are you?

[CatWoman]

45. trying to stay dry

Lots of rain in these parts, but I'm not complaining -- washes the pollen out of the air

[Rex]

39. This Bundy guy...common clay of the new west...you know...

morons.

[Victor_c3]

43. I'm a white guy, but I can do three of those

I never did try tap dancing though...

I "caught" my first born daughter when she was born during a home birth, I eat a crap-load of watermelon, and I even picked cotton once when I was in Iraq.

Actually, the cotton thing was kind of funny. I was on patrol with my platoon when I was in Iraq and my Platoon Sergeant (a black man) called me on the radio and told me to stop the patrol. We pulled our vehicles over into a field and we all got out to look at the cotton plants and to pick cotton. My platoon Sergeant was totally mesmerized by it. He cracked some racist joke about taking black people out of the US and sending them to Iraq to pick cotton. I'll have to see if I can find a picture...

[Warpy]

46. Well, we always went for distance instead of accuracy

when we'd spit watermelon seeds.

I learned all of them. The only one I'd do again is watermelon seeds. I never did grow up.

[spanone]

47. and we STILL love you, CatWoman!