Piggyback

"Can I have a piggyback?"

I didn't take your pig.
But even if I did,
I wouldn't give it back to YOU,
I'd take it to the zoo. 
Whatcha' gonna' to do with it?
You don't live on a farm.
Giving back your little pig would only do it harm.
You shouldn't try to keep a pig without a proper pen. 

"Um.."
"An airplane ride then?"


-B.C. Byron

Misunderstandings abound when we use strange phrases to describe things. Where does the term “piggyback” come from anyway. Surely kids were never foolish enough to try and ride on the backs of these surly farm animals. I was always warned not to make the pigs angry when visiting my neighbor’s farm and I could understand why after my brother told me what he saw a pig do to a rattlesnake. His buddy caught a full-grown rattler out in the weeds while they were feeding the hogs and said to my brother, “check this out” while throwing the snake straight into the pig pen. No pigs died as my brother was anticipating. Instead, the pigs went into psycho mode and poised with a sharp hoof right over the rattlesnake, waiting for the moment to strike. They snake’s head was crushed in one slick move, but the pigs didn’t stop there. They swarmed like bees and tore the creature apart, then devoured it. My brother’s friend followed this horror scene with the warning, “that could happen to you if you mess with the pigs”. I don’t know if these were particularly demonic pigs or if they had been trained as assassins, but I did learn from this story that I don’t really want a true piggyback ride. I’ll stick with the old fashioned airplane ride.

One of my favorite activities, when I got too heavy for airplane rides, was what we called “the cannon”. My sister would lie on her back on the basement floor and pull her knees up to her chest. Then one of us would sit on her feet and start the countdown. My sister had some pretty strong legs because she could launch us clear across the basement. Loads of fun while you’re in the air, but not so much when you realized that the basement floor was just thinly carpeted cement with no carpet padding. We got a ton of bruises and and good memories. We also may have lost a few memories when the trajectory was off, flipping us onto our heads.

Another favorite when I was young – putting on slick snow pants and sliding down the stairs backwards. It created a ton of friction heat so we had to keep our hands or any other exposed skin up off the carpet. It was also super bumpy, which made the screams all the more hilarious as our voices jolted up and down while we slid. Snow pants didn’t last very long in our house. Neither did carpet.