Broken Cowboy

When I was three years old, I had a toy cowboy. You couldn’t make him rope a steer or even bend his arms; he was just a hard, plastic, lack-of-action figure. His legs were permanently molded in the shape of an upside down “U” so that he could fit comfortably on his plastic horse. I’m pretty sure he wore a white shirt and bright yellow chaps, but I could be wrong. Here’s what I do know -- I loved that cowboy like no boy before or since has ever loved a plastic cowboy.

One day I wrapped my cowboy and his horse in a brown paper bag and took them to nursery school for show and tell. When it was time to go home, I wasn’t quite ready to leave. In response to my mother’s urging to hurry, I threw myself headlong into the mother of all temper tantrums as only a three-year old boy can do, right there on the street in broad daylight. What followed was the saddest moment of my young life. Powerless to control either my mother or my anger, I did the only thing that made sense at the time -- I hurled the brown paper bag down on the sidewalk and sat down and cried. When my mother bent down and picked up the bag, I stared in horror as two pieces of cowboy tumbled out. One of his legs had broken in two. My mother, being a good mother, tried valiantly to glue my cowboy back together when we got home, but he was never the same. He was broken.

Even now, thirty years later, the broken cowboy still haunts me. When my wife catches me in a bad mood, she’ll often tease me by asking, “Did you break your cowboy?” When my two-year old son throws himself down on the floor and cries, I’ll say to my wife, “It’s okay, I think he just broke his cowboy. He’ll be alright.”

Which brings us to the point of this blog. This will be my forum to write the things that must be written. Sometimes I’ll rage on about things I feel strongly about, disputing commonly held misconceptions and venting my frustrations. Down the road I’ll probably write some fiction. There will be days when I’ll write page after page on the trials and tribulations of fatherhood. In sum, this will give me an outlet so that I don’t have to break anymore cowboys. Some of what appears here will be interesting, some will be pointless, but all of it will be yours. This is Broken Cowboy.