When I was in high school, my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, was much smaller. Less than a mile from East Towne Mall, on the other side of Interstate 90/94, were acres upon acres of cornfields. Between my junior and senior year I took a job working in one of those cornfields, detasseling corn. Detasseling, which consisted of pulling the pollen-producing flowers from the tops of the plants and throwing them on the ground to cross-breed different varieties of corn, was a rite of passage for teenagers in Wisconsin.