Something New: Day–oh, who cares!

In case you hadn’t noticed, life has gotten in the way of my “Something New” series. Oh my, I just checked to see when I last posted about trying something new, and it was June 26, when I dreamed about renting a beach house! Geez. I’ve been even more remiss than I thought.

Anyway, taking care of Tommy, making trips to Tulsa to check on my mom and buying a house have all squeezed themselves on top of blogging on my list of things to do.

But, that doesn’t mean I haven’t TRIED new things — I just haven’t written about them. And, because life DOES often get in the way, and I’ve taken on a more “go-with-the-flow” attitude, I’ve decided to keep trying new things, but it probably won’t happen every day, and I probably won’t write about every new thing I try, because some of it frankly, not very interesting.

But, I DID try something new last weekend that was fun (and surprising,) and it’s something that’s been on my (secondary) bucket list for a long time — riding a mechanical bull!

Steve and I attended Taste of Dallas on Saturday, and, in an attempt to escape the 108 degree temperatures, we entered one of the air-conditioned buildings. Lo and behold, there, right at the entrance, was a mechanical bull, and beside the bull stood two rather bored-looking teen boys who appeared to be wondering why nobody wanted to ride their bull.

So, the conversation between Steve and I went kind of like this:

Jan: “Do you want to try it?”

Steve: (Grinning) “Uh, no.”

Jan: “Oh, come on. I’ll do it if you do it.”

Steve: “Okay, you go first.”

Jan: “No way, you go first.”

Steve: “Nope. Let’s go play basketball instead.”

Jan: “Oh, okay. I’ll go first, if you promise you’ll go after me.”

Steve: (Still grinning.) “Deal.”

I have to admit, it was kind of like that old Life cereal commercial from the ’70s. Remember it, the one where Mikey was finally the only one brave enough to try it?

Well, I was the brave “Mikey” to ride the bull first that day. But first, I had to figure out how to get on his back. Of course, I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, attempting (and failing, I’m sure) to hoist my leg over. And I sure didn’t want to leap (and fail miserably) on top like a real cowboy might.

 

Finally, after enough scratching my head as I circled around the bull, one of the teens felt sorry for me and offered his knee.

I was able to save face–at least temporarily.

Now, mind you, I hadn’t planned to ride a bull that day. So, I obviously wasn’t wearing the proper attire, which added to the rather mismatched pairing of Jan and Bull. No cowboy hat, no blue jeans and no cowboy boots, not to mention I was trying this for the first time at the age of 56.

Here’s how my very short ride went:

Though the bull moved like he was even older than I am, I still struggled to hold on, even grabbing his horns at one point, at which the teen behind the controls stopped and shook his finger at me.

Oh, you mean I’m only supposed to hold on to this tiny piece of rope?

Before mounting the bull, I’d imagined myself waiving my hat in the air, yelling “yeehaw” to the world, but instead, all I could do was press my thighs tight against that bull, clinging for dear life. The crowd began to grow and cheer me on. to watch the crazy old woman fly off the bull.

Finally, eleven seconds later, (I think that was including the three seconds where the teen shook his finger at me) I could hold on no longer and gave up the fight.

But it was fun, fun, fun! And, Steve did fulfill his part of the deal, with just a little coaxing. After all, he DID have to follow my performance.

But best of all, after we rode the rides-of-our-lives, a long line formed, and we left those two teens much happier than they had appeared when we first walked into that nice, cool, air-conditioned building.

So, this was definitely a thumbs-up experience!