The title’s all in caps for a reason – you’ll just have to bear with me to find that reason out. It’s complicated.

My daughter tells this story of moving to North Carolina, inviting friends over for dinner, accepting an offer to help “peel” the corn, watching leaves being literally peeled back one by one, before picking up an ear and rapidly shucking it only to be met with gasps of astonishment and amazed “how did you DO that?” questions.

My son tells this story of being involved in a day-long firefight in Afghanistan in a cornfield and the dissonance caused in his mind by having terrorists fire at him from the cover of high corn that evoked for him happy childhood memories of travelling through miles and miles of cornfields to visit his grandparents on the other side of Illinois.

At the base of both of these stories is a sort of heritage you end up with if you grow up in the cornbelt, even if nobody in your family farms; it’s ever-present enough that you acquire corn stories. And these two definitely grew up in the cornbelt – the only place that can possibly be cornier than their home state of Illinois is Iowa, where I’m headed next if you continue reading.

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