For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I

Host: The sunlight drifted through a field of wheat, a slow golden tide in the breathless air of late summer. The sky was vast and unbroken, its blue so deep it almost hummed. In the distance, a lone farmhouse stood with its peeling paint, a memory from another century. The faint smell of earth and apple pie hung on the wind, mingling with the murmur of cicadas.

Jack sat on the wooden fence, his elbows resting on his knees, watching a tractor move like a slow beast across the field. Jeeny sat beside him, her bare feet dangling over the edge, a blade of grass tucked between her lips, her eyes distant but warm.

Jeeny: “Charles Best once said, ‘For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I had devoured "The Little House on the Prairie" book series and wanted to be like Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of "Farmer Boy," one of the later installments in the "Little House" series.’”

She smiled, the sunlight catching the edge of her hair. “Imagine that, Jack — a boy whose dream wasn’t to fly or to fight, but simply to eat like a farmer boy.”

Jack chuckled softly. “You say that like it’s profound.”

Jeeny: “It is profound. It’s innocence, Jack. Pure and wild. A child dreaming not of power, but of simplicity — of fullness, not fame.”

Host: The wind shifted, stirring the wheat until it rippled like the surface of a lake. Somewhere nearby, a cowbell clanged lazily, and the world felt so old it could’ve been yesterday or a hundred years ago.

Jack: “So, you think nostalgia’s noble now?”

Jeeny: “Not nostalgia — reverence. He wasn’t wishing for the past. He was wishing for something real. To taste life the way those farm kids did — with both hands, no filters.”

Jack: “You mean hard work, sweat, and blistered palms?”

Jeeny: “Yes. And homemade butter. And breakfast before dawn. And pies that tasted like gratitude, not sugar.”

Jack: “You’re romanticizing labor, Jeeny. The prairie was brutal. People froze, starved, broke their backs to survive. There’s nothing poetic about calluses.”

Jeeny: “But there’s something sacred about earning your hunger.”

Host: Jack glanced at her, his eyes narrowing against the glare of the sun. His face held the faintest trace of softness — like a man remembering a life he’d never lived.

Jack: “You know what I think that quote really says?”

Jeeny: “What?”

Jack: “That even as children, we crave authenticity. A boy reads about another boy living off the land — building, working, eating — and suddenly, his imagination isn’t about escape. It’s about belonging. That’s rare now.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Today, children want to be superheroes. Then, they wanted to be human.”

Host: A bee buzzed near Jeeny’s shoulder; she waved it off absently. In the distance, the tractor stilled, the engine’s hum fading into silence. The air filled with the scent of hay and warm dirt.

Jeeny: “I think that’s what he was really remembering — the romance of enough. That’s what the farmer boy had: enough. Enough work to be proud. Enough food to be grateful. Enough sky to feel free.”

Jack: “And enough hardship to grow strong.”

Jeeny: “That too.”

Jack: “It’s funny, though. That kind of life, we glorify it only when we’re far away from it. City people dream of farms; farmers dream of rest.”

Jeeny: “Maybe both are dreaming of wholeness. The city promises excitement, the land promises peace. Neither delivers it completely, but both remind us it exists.”

Host: The sun began to dip lower now, turning the fields into rivers of amber. Jeeny leaned forward, her voice quieting into thought.

Jeeny: “Do you remember your childhood wishes, Jack?”

Jack: “Yeah.” He smiled faintly. “I wanted a telescope. I wanted to see everything far away. And now I spend my life staring at things too close.”

Jeeny: “Maybe Charles Best and you aren’t so different. You both wanted perspective — one to see the stars, the other to taste the earth.”

Jack: “And what about you? What did you want?”

Jeeny: “I wanted stories. To live them, to tell them. To know what it felt like to be every person in every page.”

Jack: “And did you get that?”

Jeeny smiled. “Every day.”

Host: A soft silence fell. The sky deepened into pink and violet, and the shadows grew long across the wheat. Somewhere, a barn door creaked open, and the smell of baked bread drifted faintly through the air.

Jack: “You know, I think that quote isn’t really about childhood at all.”

Jeeny: “No?”

Jack: “No. It’s about how even as adults, we chase that same feeling — that hunger for something pure, something unprocessed. We spend our lives in cities made of glass and light, and some part of us still aches for dirt under our nails and food that tastes like work.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s why we romanticize the past. Not because we want to go back — but because we want to remember what it means to feel full.”

Jack: “Full of what?”

Jeeny: “Of anything that’s real. Full of taste, full of time, full of being alive.”

Host: The wind carried her words across the field, and they seemed to hang in the air, shimmering like heat.

Jack: “You think it’s possible anymore? To live like that? To eat, to breathe, to work with your hands — without screens, without rush?”

Jeeny: “Not entirely. But we can still find pieces of it. A home-cooked meal. A walk without purpose. A day that ends because the sun sets, not because a clock says so.”

Jack: “You sound like Almanzo Wilder himself.”

Jeeny: “Maybe he knew something we’ve forgotten — that a simple life isn’t smaller, it’s deeper.”

Host: The sun finally sank, and the first stars appeared. The air cooled. Jeeny rested her head on her knees. Jack looked out over the darkening fields, his voice softer now, almost reverent.

Jack: “Maybe that’s why that boy’s wish mattered so much. It wasn’t about food. It was about wanting to live in a world where satisfaction didn’t come from excess — but from effort.”

Jeeny: “From effort, and from presence.”

Jack: “And from pie.”

Jeeny laughed — a sound pure enough to belong to the field itself.

Host: The stars brightened overhead, infinite and indifferent, yet somehow intimate. The fields whispered with wind, the same sound they had made a hundred years ago when Almanzo Wilder was only fiction and yet more real than most modern lives.

And as the night fell, Jack and Jeeny sat quietly on that fence — two souls caught between nostalgia and now, between hunger and gratitude.

In the distance, an owl called once. The farmhouse light flickered on. The world exhaled.

And for that moment — brief, perfect, whole — it was easy to believe that a child’s wish to eat like a farmer boy was not a small dream at all,
but the oldest one humanity ever had:
to be close to the earth,
to taste life in its simplest form,
and to feel, if only for an instant,
full.