I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open, completely focused on the information in front of me. We had scheduled a couple of loads of fat cattle to be shipped later that week and, with the razor-thin margins, I was ever so interested in what the market was telling me that morning.

From my perspective, I find social media to be, for the most part, a huge waste of time. It can be useful, to be sure, for a variety of reasons – but 10 minutes of productivity somehow usually evaporates into 45 wasted minutes viewing an array of ridiculous political rants, videos and borderline crude GIFs and memes.

Colleen is my neighbor. She and her husband, Rick, live on a little 9- or 10-acre piece about 5 miles down the road from my place. Colleen rescues things.

As if from the staccato blast of a Gatling gun, I felt three sharp, painful smacks to my head just under my hat and directly behind my right ear. Except for the occasional Red Ryder BB gunfight with my cousins when I was a kid and the time my back was peppered by some shotgun pellets from an idiot pheasant hunter as I was fixing a fence, I’ve never really been shot.

Most summers, I am blessed, or cursed, with the opportunity to judge some county fair youth livestock shows. I don’t suppose I am any smarter than the average know-it-all parent who leans on the fence and distracts his 10-year-old during the junior showmanship class, but word got out several years ago I can talk a good line of B.S. and take abuse.

Sometimes I’m a walking cliché. I tend to leap before I look, try to run before I walk, step over a dollar to pick up a dime, put the cart before the horse, count the chickens before they’re hatched … Well, you get the idea.