I was there.  The Latin root for our word “festival” means feast or holiday.  And the Latin word “festivus” is an adjective for “joyful, festive, gay.”  I usually achieve this mood by Thursday of a typical Watermelon Festival week.  Something about the heat, the long hours and the frenetic pace makes me giddy.  Someone I know even says I become more flirty during this period. I’m dearly sorry.

So when Lance asked his question, I was game.  When I was about eight, a movie came out named Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta as a rural type (excuse the accent) who moves to Pasadena and starts frequenting Gilley’s.  There he meets his romantic interest, Deborah Winger. Travolta strikes a bit of a rivalry with Scott Glenn, but somehow Travolta wins Winger’s heart, I think because when it comes to riding the Gilley's mechanical bull, he can keep his Wrangler-jeaned butt on that thing longer than anybody else.  That's what it took in Pasadena, Texas to be a great catch.

I never saw the movie until I caught it on cable, but the songs from its soundtrack were everywhere, being performed on Solid Gold and all the country shows on Saturdays that my parents watched.  I think I knew the lyrics to Johnny Lee’s “Lookin’ For Love” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” before I could master long division.  I’d use long division sometimes in grading in my two decades as English teacher.  But those songs have taught me truths no chalkboard or calculator could quite bring home.  

So Dietrich Young, our video and sound guy for the day, Lance and I proceeded across the street and toward where Robert Benight manned the mechanical bull booth.  He told me he hoped his new business lasted longer than I was about to on the bull.

The rule was to lose your footwear at the entrance of the air mattress pasture that is Otis the robot bull’s territory. He kindly stayed still as I got on.  At first I thought Robert was going a little easy on me, putting Otis on the childrens’ setting for about three seconds.  I think I tried to say something about it being easier than I thought, but what I said came through the mic I was wearing like the words of Kenny from SouthPark. 

Then next, the bull began turning and bucking in a way that gave me this choice:  I could either allow the bull to turn my pelvis waaaay before my belly, shoulders, neck and head could follow it, resulting in my vertebral column having to do a corkscrew twist, or I could let the next of Otis’ bucks catapult me off.  That’s what I went with. 

Somehow, while I was facing the ground as I made my exit, I landed on my back seeing my bare right foot go aloft.  As I slowly picked myself up off the mattress and then felt my feet touch ground, I saw someone lovely walk up and I said, “Hey, it’s Deborah Winger!”

So that’s how it happened.