Dear World: I Don't Know How to Be Normal

Being an “internet person” is a very difficult thing to explain

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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On Monday, the old farmer came to tear down my barn. He asked me what I did for a living.

Being an “internet person” is a very difficult thing to explain, so then I say I’m a writer, and then they want to know what books I’ve written, and I thank christ every time that I have a ‘real’ book in ‘real’ stores because somehow that makes me feel like I have validation from people who have never written anything and never will write anything but are judging my professional value by my publishing credentials, which is really the only credentials that non-internet-people have to go by.

The old farmer is not an internet person. He is a Wrangler jeans person. He is a mud-on-your-knees person. He is the kind of person who eats salisbury steak for breakfast, and listens to trivia on the radio, and still gets the daily newspaper, and probably has a jesus cross above his single mattress bed.

He did not understand what I do for a living.

But, apparently, I didn’t understand what HE did for a living, either, because next thing I know, an excavator the size of a dinosaur is rolling up to my lawn (way bigger than the little mini I rented), and so is a skid steer (look it up) that looks exactly like Johnny 5 (look it up), and so is the biggest dump truck I have ever seen in my life.

The old farmer, turns out, has toys.

We set out to accomplish three things:

1. Level the old barn because a flood had caved in all the floors and the roof had flown away and all the wood had all rotted out and I have no idea what I am talking about with these things but everyone in town kept asking me what I was doing with it, presumably because it was an eyesore, albeit a rustically charming one, so obviously I told them I was gonna CRUSH IT.

2. Tear out a 90-foot-long old concrete wall from 1946 that was tipping over and all cracked and thick as hell and looked like something the Soviets had planted. This concrete wall was the bane of my existence: it lined the driveway of the farmhouse, which meant I needed to back in and out of the driveway without hitting it. Apparently I am very bad at backing out of driveways without hitting things, a problem I blame on having lived abroad for so long and not owning a car. That said, I am still (somehow?) a beast when it comes to parallel parking. My mom taught me that. The woman could not drive in a drizzle to save her life, but ask her to get into the tightest spot on the tiniest street, and she wouldn’t flinch. Weird, how some things we decide to be scared of, and other things we decide are okay?

3. Rip out the old concrete driveway, also from 1946, that was cracked to hell and made the property look sad and also was apparently a trip hazard according to my homeowner’s insurance (and also probably the UPS guy, who I am sure is tired of dragging heavy boxes of parry blue fishscale tiles from Spain up the driveway). What I didn’t bank on, however, was how far underneath the house that concrete driveway went—and how removing it would essentially RIP OFF ALL THE OLD WOOD SIDING and also LIFT UP THE ENTIRE GARAGE and also BRICKS WOULD START FALLING DOWN and SUDDENLY WE ARE DEMO-ING THE ENTIRE HOUSE.

The plan was to level the barn, and then take all of the concrete and dump it on top of that, and then take all the dirt—which the farmer calls “material”—and pile it on top of all of that.

And that’s exactly what we did.

BEHOLD!

RIP, barn.

Here is what it looks like now:

It could be a pickleball court!

Not that I know how to play pickleball, but I’ve heard it’s all the rage. I also heard that cold plunge pools are all the rage, so basically when I start having guests at the cottage, I’m going to tell them to walk straight into the pond.

I tied a rope to section this area off because I was afraid some 19-year-old punk would drive right off the road into the dirt and do donuts on top of “material” that is not settled, which would result in the world’s most awkward confrontation as I go outside in my oversized granny sweater and attempt to yell. I am not very good at yelling. It always comes out more like a polite suggestion.

The rope is weird, however, because it keeps sagging in the middle. Every day the rope sags, and every day I have to fix it. This morning when I woke up, however, someone else had fixed my rope. I gawked at it out the window, entirely creeped out. Am I being watched? Who is touching my rope? Are the neighbors talking about me and my saggy rope?

Speaking of polite suggestions, when the farmer was all done, I asked him what number I was putting on the check. (Remember, I write checks now???)

He said to me, “Is $4,000 okay?”

And I just melted into the earth.

He said it with such apology, as if he were sorry he had to charge me anything at all.

The next day they came back and brought me 23 tons of gravel and graveled both driveways, and also knocked down two dead trees, and also plucked a bunch of stumps, and also got one more stubborn piece of concrete out of the way.

When I asked him what number I was putting on the check that day, he said to me: “Is $300 okay?”

And again, I melted into the earth.

Beyond being bowled over by the modesty of the fee, I realized that by being so vulnerable with the way he presented his price made me want to give him so much more. Isn’t that interesting? In a normal world, I would advocate for stating your pricing with unshakable confidence. And yet, his asking me if it was okay made me just want to shower him with cash.

And so then I gave him way too much money because I don’t know how to be normal.

So when the farmer was finally leaving, he turned to me and thanked me and then told me that he didn’t know anything about writing, but that I must be very good at it.

And then I blushed and told him we weren’t that different, he and I; that the best writers are the ones who aren’t afraid to throw on a pair of Wrangler jeans, and get mud on their knees, and eat a salisbury steak for breakfast, and listen to trivia on the radio, and read the daily newspaper, and fight like hell in the things we believe in.

We just do it in a different way.