For The Smell Of It

I was just listening to the local country music station and heard a song that reminded me of an adventure that we had a couple of months ago.

Once a year in our small town arena, there is a bull riding contest. I've heard about it each year that we've lived here, but have never gone. I had heard that it was fun and asked M if he thought we should go. "Sure" he said "the whole town goes to it. It's called 'Rock n Roll Bull Riding' this year." R was excited and T wasn't so sure about it. We talked it up and got a partial agreement from T-boy that he might have fun.

It looked like parking would be a pain, so we parked at my office and walked across the street. We could hear the rock-n-roll music blaring and felt the excitement in the air as we approached the will-call window. R started jumping up and down (as he does when he's excited -- I can't wait to see him on his wedding day waiting for his wife to walk down the aisle.) But. T wasn't excited. T immediately covered his mouth. As we walked a few more steps, I realized why he was covering his mouth - the bull*poop smell. It was pretty strong. T started crying loudly and stopped in his tracks. He was sobbing and saying "I can't do it. I can't do it." I knelt down and told him that he'd get used to it. "No I WON'T!" he sobbed with big huge tears rolling down his face. Sensing the crowd behind me wanting to press forward, I got a little stern and said, "you'll get used to it, let's go" and yanked him a bit.

To this he responded by throwing up right in the entrance.

A large puddle of puke in front of us, I helped T get over the puddle. At the same time, I motioned to a worker that there was a puddle of puke that needed to get taken care of, and I moved T over to the side to clean up his mouth. Before he threatened to do it again, I got a moment of inspiration. I told him that our seats were way up high and that we'd be really far away from the smell. If we held our breaths and hurried, we'd get up there before our noses even knew it. It worked....and we were off.

Relieved to be out of that messy situation, we settled down to hear T say, "oooh, yeah, you're right Mom. It smells better up here." Whew!

Have you ever been to a bull riding contest? Well, let me tell you, there isn't really a lot of bull riding that goes on. Mostly a lot of waiting and a lot of falling-off-bulls. In order to get a score, they have to stay on for eight seconds. Seconds. Only half of them got scores. (Yes, that means that half didn't even stay on for 8 seconds.) After the less-than-eight-seconds of bull-falling-off-ness, it would take seven minutes to get the next bull and rider ready. Let's just say that now I can check watching a bull riding contest off of my mental list of things to do in this town and call it a day. Luckily the men in my family (even T) enjoyed it. They can go again next year and do some male-bonding while I stay home and do my nails, or scrapbook, or blog, or anything...

Oh yeah, I need to tell you about getting T out of there. He declared that the only way he would leave is via an enclosed elevator that he would enter from the top of the stands. The only problem with that great idea was, you guessed it, there was no such elevator. So, we did the next best thing. I told him to take a deep breath and run for it. He did and we kept him in sight as he dashed down the steps, across the arena, and out the doors -- never looking back.