Consequences and Pride

Welcome back sorry for the cliff hanger ending, oh an the run-on sentences. It was my first blog and I wanted to make sure you came back. So the ending…The ending was ugly, it was ugly because of the beginning. Confused? The wreck was the logical conclusion to a path of events set in motion by 3 individuals making bad decisions based on fear, laziness, and impatience.

If the bull would have made the right decision he would have came into the pen for feed and been standing around a hay bale right now, but he made a decision based on fear. If the horse would have kept tracking the bull instead of getting tired and trying to duck out he would have been on the same side of the tree as the bull, but he made a decision based on laziness. If I would have been more patient I would have not had to go rope the bull in the first place, I made a decision based on impatience.

So there we all were fixing to hit the end of the rope and face the consequences of our bad decisions’. As you can imagine the rope got tight and things got wild. The 600lb bull got jerked over like a roping calf. The horse went down on his face like a Muslim on a mat at 3:00pm, and I would have flown off like a bronc rider in the 6 th round of the NFR if it hadn’t been for the rope which was tied off to the horn and crossing over my right thigh and around and under the horse holding me on like a seatbelt. Good news is we all lived, Thank you Lord!, and hopefully we are all a little wiser.

But it makes me think; I can think back to a lot of the wrecks in my life and track them back to a bad decision, sometimes based on fear like the bull, laziness like the horse or impatience like the jockey. Just food for thought.

I know my Blogs are going to be too long, but all that was just the end of the first blog, So now I have to start today’s. If this is too much reading for you feel free to go to concession stand and take a break or buy some weezers or something then come back.

Back in the Mid 90’s when I was on my PRCA rookie card I had a few, shall we say, personality flaws. One of which was my adamant fear of…umm…going number 2 in public bathrooms. I drove my traveling partner’s nuts having to find woods whenever I needed to go. This wasn’t too bad of a problem except when your rodeoing in the Midwest where they don’t have “woods”.  One such occasion happen one year in Cheyenne Wyoming. 2 or 3 day runs weren’t so bad because I could hold it but in thoses days Cheyenne was a two header and you would be up like Saturday and Thursday or something like that so you had to hang out for a while and maybe go to Spanish Fork, Utah or another nearby rodeo.

Anyway, point being I couldn’t hold it that long and there wasn’t a lot of thick forests up there on the plains to use. I had run into this problem before and had come up with some creative solutions, for example, finding a crowded parking lot and ducking down in between cars. Yes I know it was wrong, and looking back I feel bad and I am sorry for the people that slipped down getting into their cars. But it was just on of those things that had to be done.

Well, this time was different I had rode a pretty hard to ride horse of Charlie Battles earlier in the day and was placing in the round at the Daddy of them All’. I had an aire of confidence about me. I though to myself “ You aren’t a permit holder anymore you need to get this problem under control”. So I decided to use the public bathroom at the Walmart there in town.

Here is a pic for the ride eariler that day.

I felt kinda like the bull in the previous story not wanting to go in the pen but I did it, I went into the bathroom nervous as barrel horse in the alley (Those thing will kill you by the way).  I picked the cleanest stall and went in, locked the door, closed my eyes, and took a death breath (after a brief coughing and gaging spell I figured the deep breath was a mistake, Wal-Mart bathrooms stink!) and decided I was just going to do it. On the wall in the back of the stall was the box that held those little paper toilet seat covers. I honestly had no idea what they were or what they were used for. I quickly figured it out. But I decided I wasn’t going to just use one I wanted to be extra careful so I pulled out about 20 of them and put them on the seat. I turned around and sat down hoping I could get this over with muey pronto. I didn’t think I could do it, I was looking for an excuse to blow outta there and go find some trees. After a short time I heard steps outside the door. I am beading up with sweat on my forehead like a fat guy at a buffet. I remember saying “Lord Please let them pass on by I don’t need any company right now!” No such luck. Soon as the guy came in I was checking out. This was the most uncomfortable bathroom in the world and I wasn’t staying for a second longer so I jumped up jerked up my pants and was working on my buckle as headed out the door. I felt such a relief to get outta that stinky little dungeon of a bathroom, I was all the way back to my rodeo buddies before I noticed the back pants being wet, when I realized what it was I could feel my face getting red, and my head getting hot….TO BE CONTINUED. Don’t forget to hit the like button up top.

Jeremy