It's Saturday night and I'm doing what I normally do on Saturday nights. Nothing. Well nothing, and watching rodeo. It appears to very serious business because each of the contestants is wearing the equivalent of a full-body cast BEFORE they ride. Neck and back braces, wrist wraps and even the odd helmet. Someone needs to send these ol' boys a memo and tell them that these animals are BIG.

The band played a wedding this summer for a wonderful couple, the groom of which is a cowboy. Not the OSU variety, but rather the 'fall off a horse/bull/Crazy Arkansas chick variety. This guy and all his buds are that 'no screwing around' tough. Many you could hook up their horse trailer to their chin. Most of the introductions for the evening went like, "Geoff this is Rusty, Rusty..this is Geoff. He's hilarious." Then we'd shake hands and it felt like having my hand in a hydraulic vise. A vise twice the size of mine. Rusty would smile a Skoal-filled crooked yet warm smile, and I would smile in a way that said, "damn I hope I survive this handshake." You see my hands are tough from years of fighting gingivitis. Rusty's hands are tough from years of throwing 800 lb. animals on their ass by twisting their heads around to see their respective now-empty scrotums, for which, Rusty was acutely responsible too. I remember one time twisting MY neck really far too. It was from swinging at a golf ball. Take that, Rusty. Try living with the repercussions of miss clubbing from 175 yards. So I don't wanna hear about getting a finger knotted up in a mis-thrown heeler during a NFR qualifier.

I did learn that it is universally thought that real cowboys, in real Wranglers and clean starched shirts are quite dearly thought of by the fairer sex. No matter which directions their fingers, kneecaps or shoulders go. So maybe there is something to strapping oneself to a giant critter with the brain of a drunken possum.

I remember as a kid meeting Larry Mahan. He was working a booth at the State Fair in his home state of Oregon in about 1971. It was late in the day, his day had been full of glad-handing folks, listening to the same stories of greatness recalled of him from adoring fans, and I'm sure about 3 cans of Copenhagen. Dad saw him, recognized the name and knew that I liked autographs and this would be an opportunity. Larry was essentially alone in the dim light of a hanging light bulb in a fair booth. Now, I didn't know squat about rodeo other than the limited exposure of Wide World of Sports and well, I thought it was super-cool because it showed these ultra-tough guys doing amazing things. And the entirity of their armamentarium was: a hat. A rope, maybe. But a hat for sure. And there was Larry Mahan, then 5-time world Champion, right in front of me. As late in the day as it was, and as hungover as he could have been, when he saw this goofy little 8 year old kid with a bad choice in personal wardrobe, he did as I'm sure he had done a thousand times before that day: he smiled, called me by my freshly-introduced name, and shook my hand with a paw that felt like extra-course grit sandpaper. He engaged my dad on some small talk, mussed my hair and signed "To Geoff, Best Wishes...Larry Mahan". And you know what...when he won that sixth championship in 1973, I read of it in the papers and smiled a big goofy smile. Because my buddy had done it again.

I knew right then that I'm probably not cut out for rodeo. Which is a shame. I tend to think that life's greatest achievements really could be marked not with a piece of paper, e.g. birth certificates, marriage licenses, diplomas, etc., but rather a good belt buckle. Can one imagine the glory, not to mention the sheer mass of the buckle celebrating a new driver's license? Or the utter glory of a college degree? Not to mention boy-girl conquests? Yessir, a buckle the size of a dinner plate is loud, proud and mostly...portable. EVERYONE can see it. Who needs a doctoral sheepskin when you can have something roughly the size of a '58 Buick bumper around one's waist?

But being that rodeo, or pro football, or mixed martial arts championships are out of reach (not for a lack of talent mind you, but I'm pretty sure it would take me out of that 1650 daily caloric intake thing we all live by, right?) then I'd have to draw on my wealth of knowledge from personal experience to whittle down to a list of things I COULD do, eliminating from a set of jobs I HAVE done. I hate to be repetitive.

Therefore, I can remove paper-thrower, having tossed the Washington Post for three years. I hated that job if for no other reason than it set my sleep schedule from 9:15pm to 5:00am...through high school. Oddly, chicks didn't dig my uncontrolled yawning starting at 8:20. For that matter they didn't dig my permed hair, bad glasses, or lack of much socially in general either. The upside was I was awake when the FM stations played the great music that they couldn't play during prime time... Not to mention any time there was a need to be caller 7 to win a contest or new promo album on the radio, it wasn't uncommon that I was caller 2,3,5,6 and 7. "WPGC...you're caller 7...oh, hey Geoff. Yeah, I've got your address right here. 20870 is your zip right?" So in hind sight it was a push.

Next on the list would be yardguy/maintenance man. This involved learning-on-the-fly electrical and plumbing work. It's amazing how mad one can get at one's self when "Be sure you flip the breaker" is ignored. Twice. I learned how to tile and grout. And dry wall. I also learned that I hope to never do that again in my life, and so when these activities present themselves today, I plead ignorance. The upside to that job was learning pool maintenance. In a college town. No, the chemicals probably didn't NEED to be checked every 20 minutes, but when working for your step-dad, one cannot be too careful. I could die in an electrical accident. I wasn't going to die because the pool needed chlorine. Self-preservation, you know.

I worked at Hardee's for two, count 'em two nights. That's NIGHTS. I learned that brown polyester doesn't breathe and it DOES catch fire easily. And when my direct supervisor had "Love" and "Hate" tattoo'ed across her fingers...I knew that I probably wasn't going to be flying up any corporate ladders anytime soon. I learned to be incredibly nice to those in the food service business. They can, and will, jack with your dinner. And not care one bit. I also learned to not order the fried pies. Ever.

Well, with this deep and wide assortment on my resume', I guess rodeoing wouldn't be that bad. After all it's only 8 seconds. And it's not hauling wet carpet out of a flooded apartment, or being yelled 'custom order!!!' by a amphetamine driven line cook, or even walking in the pouring cold rain tossing papers. No, I wouldn't have to get my mind around being thrown 15 feet in the air, and landing on my ear.

Mentally, I would just have to survive shaking hands with 20 'Rustys' every weekend.