Of Pig Slaughter and Airplanes

On the last of my three flights, from Seattle to Anchorage, I accidentally hit the leg of the guy sitting next to me with my purse.  "Oh sorry."

"Do you live in Alaska?"

It's known that Alaskan women have poor purse control.  "I don't.  I'm going for the first time, to work in Talkeetna.  Do you live there?"

We establish he has lived in Anchorage for nine years, and before that, Indiana.  He asks where I am from and I tell him the Los Angeles area.

"Oh, I lived in Southern California when I was a kid."

"Oh really, where?"

"La Habra."

I hit his arm and say, "No way!  I'm from Whittier!  I went to high school in La Habra!"

"Sonora?"

"Yes!"

His older brother went there in the late 70s.  The family moved away when this guy was still seven years old.

"Hey," he said, "Is there a slaughterhouse right by the school?"

I frowned.  "No... I don't think so.  Maybe there was in the 70s.  Why?"

"Because I remember going to my brother's high school one time and seeing a slaughterhouse there."

"Hmm.  Maybe it was a dream you had?"

He scratched his chin.  "Maybe."

"Well, they do have a farm with animals, for the kids in the Agriculture program.  They have like steers, and pigs, and lambs..."

He nods. 

"Oh!" I say suddenly.  "You know what?  They slaughter pigs right there at the school!  My friend was in Ag for three years and she saw it happen, where they'll like string it up and let out its blood and then chop it up... that's probably what you saw."

He was nodding this whole time.  "Yeah, that must be it.  It was really traumatic."

I should have shared that during my one-year stint in high school Agriculture I castrated a lamb, but I didn't think of it, and also it might be disturbing if the random woman on the airplane who keeps hitting you tells you a story about removing an animal's testes.

O life!