It was my friend’s stag night. We stood in the middle of a parking lot. At one end of the lot there was a strip club. At the other end, a country and western bar. The choice was obvious.
We strode into the country and western bar and were blown away. It was packed. There were ladies dressed like Daisy Duke, and dudes sporting belt buckles the size of a frisbee. The music was in full swing. We grabbed some beers and joined in the dancing.
At one point in the evening the lights went down. A siren began to wail and a spotlight shone over a paddock off to one side of the bar. The paddock was filled with sawdust and, in its center, the beam of light glistened on a mechanical bull. The crowd went wild.
People lined up to take turns riding the bull. The riders had to wear a ridiculous 10 gallon hat, like Hoss from Ponderosa. Everyone stood around the paddock and cheered the riders on.
We lined up. When I got to the front the operator said “Sorry, can’t let you ride”. When I asked why not he said “You are too heavy. This thing is so old we can’t get replacement parts for it any more. We have a 175 pound weight limit”. Needless to say I was disappointed.
My friend, whose stag night this was, produced a $20 bill. He gave it to the operator and said “Does this make my friend look a little slimmer?” The operator smiled and said, “Giddyup, Hoss”.
So I donned the ridiculous hat and mounted the mechanical bull. The crowd cheered. The operator really was worried about the fate of the bull, so he set it to “super slow-mo” speed. Honestly, I was moving around with the vigor of a granny in a rocking chair. The crowd roared for more. I made eye contact with the operator, urging him to dial it up.
So he did. What I did not appreciate was that, in addition to rotational and translational motion, the mechanical bull also has the ability for vertical motion. The seat of the bull dropped away from me, only to rush back up with the force of a battering ram on my testicles. This happened twice in quick succession. Boom. Boom.
There was a collective gasp from the crowd that sounded something like “ohhhhowwwww”. Then a searing pain in my nether regions as I slid off the bull into the sawdust without the full use of my extremities. I distinctly remember the grin on the operators face as I lay in the sawdust, twitching.
I spent the rest of the evening walking like a wounded gunslinger.
[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]