I grew up in Texas, in a
small town housing the only college in the country that offers a degree in
rodeo. (Technically, it's a degree in agri-business, with a specialization in
rodeo. Still, it was the only one in the country!)
So I grew up around
cowboys. I went to rodeos to watch my cowboy friends rope and ride, winced when
they were thrown by a bull or a bronco. I helped toss hay out of the back of
pickups while my cowboy friends lured the cattle in with their own special call
(I didn't even know the term "cattle call" meant anything other than
calling cows in for dinner until I was an adult). I've been to cattle auctions
and I've watched cowboys guide their animals onto trucks after a sale. I
learned to dance—the two-step (fast and slow), the waltz, the Cotton-Eyed
Joe—from cowboys.
But I didn't really learn
to appreciate those cowboys until I moved away from Texas for several years.
They were just part of the background, part of the world I lived in. Until I
wasn't around them any longer, I didn't really know how much the cowboys I grew
up around had shaped my ideas of what makes the ideal man. Now that I'm back in
Texas, I've spent some time thinking about what it is that is so appealing
about a cowboy.
Of course, it doesn't
hurt that all that hard work—the roping calves, riding horses, hauling hay,
mucking out stalls, and such—generally leads to a great body. Most cowboys are
lean and muscled, and I could spend hours pinning cowboy pictures to my
Pinterest page (and maybe I have, once or twice . . . ).
