Brit Blaise

He was a bull rider, about my height with lean solid muscles. My step-father was there for the cutting competition, so I had a lot of free time. I didn’t see my super-kissing cowboy ride his bulls…I was only interested in his lips.

However, when he showed up at a horseshow the following weekend, he scared me. With no bull riding at this show, he’d made it clear he’d come for me. While I kissed him a little that second time, I worried. And I guess he figured it out because I didn’t see him again.

Another wild cowboy had come in my life a year earlier when I was sixteen and learning to drive. I wasn’t ready to be serious. Like the other cowboy who came along later, this one followed me to the shows, but I didn’t mind. This one knew my parents and he seemed like the boy next door. Maybe he was, but I didn’t get a chance to find out. We had a tragic ending when he had a motorcycle accident during one of his visits to me at a horse show. It was a serious one.

After his accident, he changed. Now, I understand it: then I didn’t have a clue.

Cowboys were a way of life as I grew up. There was never a day without a horse, riding, and all that having show-quality horses entailed. Cowboys came to ride at our farm, we went to shows and rodeos almost every weekend in the summer and rode daily. Later we sold the farm and moved to house with ten acres to ride. Without the bull riding shoots and the big arena, not so many cowboys came to the house. But we went to a lot of horse shows and rodeos. And there was 4-H.

Now I realize what a great experience that was. And life with cowboys, I preface this with an apology: is a very limiting experience in many ways. I had my close friends at school, but all my friends outside of school were cowboys, wives of cowboys, children of cowboys, horses and more horses. It is literally “being in the life”.