When I wuz first asked to write for Rural Living (OK, I wuz forced to, by an Editor person who can get anybody to do anything…), I told my friend. He is a true-blue Townie. If he doesn’t get to a café for a latté, like, real often, he will die!

He asked me if my articles would be, you know, simple, folksy and probably, cowsy. I added ‘cowsy’ actual. He probably couldn’t think of many other country animals. Especially now that our sheep population has been drastically reduced to just a few billion.

To help him along, I asked if he meant earthy, arable-like and tractorish. Or quaint, and perhaps moo-ish. I informed him that country folks did not wallow in the squalor of mindless magazines featuring endless garbage about pseudo-celebrities, like Townies do.

You only have to break wind on Hollywood Boulevard or expose your fifth new lover since Saturday, to feature on the cover of any one of these sad reads catering to those with no lives of their own. He gave me a ‘but-I-don’t-read-these-pathetics-myself’ look. I wonder if he does, at the hairdressers.

A recent news item stated that increasing numbers of caregivers are so busy twittering, you-tubing and face-booking etc. that they almost forget they have ‘real’ children in close proximity (e.g. in the same house…). Can’t happen out in the country, I told him.

In Ruralia (that place where ‘real life’ still happens) everybody is in the team, and that includes the full Monty of… humans, animals and plants. Not necessarily by choice, country folk have to be 3 Percenters. In case you don’t know what a 3 Percenter is, let me reveal…

I coined this definition yonks back. A 3 Percenter (about 3% of the population) is, ‘an individual who actually DOES something, without coercion’. That means, on most occasions, unless they have a particular ‘investment’ in a situation, 97% of the population usually, do bugger all!

This is one heckofa lot of people whom you and I must carry through life (metaphorically speaking). If you don’t quite get the picture yet, just go to the next meeting of anything, and ask for ‘volunteers’. See what I mean? So, you have to teach your babies very early, about becoming a 3 Percenter.

Then they can lead the full life. The great unwashed can only live ‘half-lives’, because they don’t do much. If you want to become one yerself, send me an e-thingie to ask for my 3 Percenter formula. That’s right. 97% of you won’t. Mainly, because you can’t. Such is life. Tough!

Now, when your young Rural Rugrat asks, ‘Excuse me, Mum (Well, Dad is out planting a thousand trees before breakfast…). Am I a 3 Percenter?’ You can reply, ‘Of course you are, dear. Now go out and do your 300 chores before it gets dark, OK.’

The Townie version of the above scenario, might go something like this… ‘You might be, one day, darling, but for now, you’re just becoming obese and… would you please make up your bed. It hasn’t been made up since April…’

My friend thought I wuz being a titch on the hard side, with my Rural Living articles about Townies. I told him that Townies could create their own publication, and make snide remarks about their rural cuzzies. It could be called ‘Urban Urges’. Then we finished our lattés…

Join me on my maverick personal growth and business dynamics Course, The TERRIFIC Seminar to ignite your future! Ask me for the good oil. I live nonchalantly at duitdammit@xtra.co.nz Cheers.