The Wild West

One summer night, my friend invited me up to his town to watch their local rodeo. This was about two and a half hours north of me, just over the state line. It seemed like a good idea to me, so I got in the car, and made the journey, driving through hours of no cell service and hordes of suicidal groundhogs.

The rodeo was hosted in a packed arena. We found our seats, and several extremely drunk, thirty-somethings smashed into the bleachers behind us. I had on a very festive shirt with jack-a-lopes on it, and the drunk woman behind me proceeded to pet them and whisper "Jack-off-a-lopes" for the entirety of the rodeo. When I would turn to look at her, she was touching me, she would lapse into a fit of drunk giggles and pretend to not see me. It wasn't a battle I could win.

The rodeo turned out to be on the pro-rodeo circuit, and unbeknownst to my friend and me, our other friend, who had grown up on a farm, knew the rules of rodeo. We tried to ask him all sorts of questions, but yelling over the drunk people and the crowd made it futile.

Near the end of the rodeo, the the program said there was an event called the Wild West Show Bubble Ball Event. This was the penultimate event, the bull riding being the show finisher.

"What do you think the Bubble Ball Event is?" I asked my friend.

And the drunk guy behind us yelled, "Two years ago a bull ripped the pants off a girl, then the next year they put pool noodles on the bull's horns."

He expectantly broke into a fit of drunk laughter, and I still didn't really know what the Bubble Ball Event was.

Then a group of what looked to be teenagers stepped into the arena. You could see their legs, then their torsos and heads were obscured by big plastic bubbles. They were like inflatable beach balls which were five feet tall with a tunnel down the middle where a body could go.

"Whoa," my friend said.

Then the kids started running toward the barrels, and we were like, Oh okay. they have to complete a barrel racing course while in these inflatable Sumo Wrestler bubbles. Fun!

They crashed into each other, then the gates on the other side of the arena opened, and two bulls ran in.

"What the hell..." me or my friend said.

The bulls ran at the kids, who were running at the barrels, and I realized my concept of safety was different than whatever was happening in the arena. I also noted that this year, the bulls were not wearing pool noodles. Apparently, that safety mitigation was no longer in place.

The bull bopped one of the bubble kids. The kid fell down, then the bulls seemingly lost interest in the kids and started to run the walls.

This all felt anti-climatic, in a horrifying way, did I want a bull to gore a kid? Most of the kids completed the barrel racing course and made it out of the arena, the bulls not at all interested in them.

Except for one kid. That kid was sorta walking. Then he, I know it was a he, despite not being able to see his face, changed course, and walked straight at a bull. Once he reached the bull, the kid ran directly into the side of the bull, bouncing off of the bull's ribs. The bull actually seemed startled by this, and froze, watching as the kid recovered from his bounce. Then the bull continued to run the walls, and the kid, half-heartedly ran back to the gate.

"That kid is getting a DUI in five years," I told my friend.

"I bet he joins the Marines," a fifty-something-year-old man near us said.

We watched the bull riding, then at the very end of the rodeo, the announcer told us we were about to be treated to a top of the line fireworks show. A UTV pulling a rickety trailer drove into the center of the arena and a mom, dad, and two chunky boys appeared. They all wore T shirts that said, PYRO CREW, which I thought was a bit of an overstatement. The matching shirts did not convince me they were pyrotechnical experts.

Then, the trailer, which held the fireworks started to shake, and the fireworks started. It was loud, sort of fun, then a firework exploded right out of the trailer. Five feet above the trailer a giant fireball erupted, and even though I was probably at least two hundred feet from the trailer, my fingers went to my eyebrows.

I still had them. I looked at my friends. They still had theirs. I started to laugh uncontrollably, and another fireball exploded. The crowd was screaming. The drunk people behind us hit our backs. And I realized, while I was one of the few people in the stands not inebriated on hard lemonade, we were all in that dusty arena together, losing our minds, our hearing, and possibly eyebrows.

The sense of community was overwhelming.