It’s amazing how generous teenagers will get when challenged.

Driving all night, I arrived home from Madison, Wis., just in time to hear the milk pump turn on Friday morning. It had been a long night, but it was going to be an even longer day with Homecoming festivities ahead of me.

During breakfast and my fourth cup of coffee, Luke alerted me that he volunteered to bring a heifer in for the pep assembly at school that afternoon. Sure, why not? I have nothing else to do; I’ve had plenty of sleep. I’m up for anything!

He told me if the kids raised $300 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, one of the teachers, Mrs. Flowers, promised to kiss a cow. My thought was, Well, that’s a lot of money, this is a small school, this will never happen, so no need to worry about selecting a heifer, washing her, hooking up the trailer or anything else.

I smirked and said, Okay, keep me updated on whether they raise the money or not.

The kids got off to school and I immediately collapsed on my bed when just a few minutes into my nap, my phone rang – it was Luke. “Mom?”

“Yes.”

“They want you to bring the heifer in.”

“Oh? You haven’t raised the money yet, have you?”

“No, not yet, but they plan to, so if you could have her here by 2 p.m., that would be good.”

“Okay, no problem.” NOT!

I lay there just a little longer thinking about the day’s schedule. Chores, run errands, find the laundry room, press Luke’s dress clothes for the Homecoming dance – and what on earth was there in the cupboard to fix for lunch? And now I had to add on washing a heifer in time for her to dry for her pep assembly debut.

Standing in the barnyard washing the heifer, I thought about the last few days and the countless cows that had been washed at World Dairy Expo, and here I was doing the same thing. Only, instead of parading across the colored shavings in front of hundreds of critical eyes, she would be parading into a noisy gym on a hardwood floor for a hundred teenagers to be kissed by a forty-something English teacher.

My, how life is strange.

Connie was clean, loaded and off to school, and when I walked into the gym to see how the assembly was going I heard the emcee saying, “We haven’t quite raised enough money for Mrs. Flowers to kiss a cow yet, but the cow is here and we need to raise that money – so you have exactly one minute to raise $122 to make the $300 goal. GO!”

The hat was passed and they started collecting, and I have to say I’ve never seen so many generous teenagers. They began sifting through their pockets for money, and in that one minute they surpassed their goal.

Now it was Connie’s turn, and when she entered the gym it got totally silent as she clunked across the hardwood. Mrs. Flowers met Connie and it was love at first sight. She gave her a hug, kissed her and the crowd roared and cheered.

As tired as I was, I was glad to have been the closest dairy farm to the school. Seeing those kids give generously and watching their reaction to the “cow kiss” was worth it all.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.