Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Giving definition to normal

by Julie Carter

Cowboys are generally amicable critters but sometimes their perception of reasonable and normal puts them in a bit of a bind.

Billy and Connie, husband and wife, were driving down the road to pick up yet another load of wheat cattle to put out on pasture. This particular morning, Billy was explaining in great detail to his bride just what his “reasonable expectations” included.

All he wanted was a normal wife, he said. A normal wife would not think crackers were an acceptable substitute for bread and peanut butter was not sandwich filler.  His list went on from there only to be interrupted by the task at hand.

As is often the case in the Texas Panhandle, the weather was despicable, cold and raining right straight down. When they arrived at the pasture where the cattle they were picking up were penned, Billy pulled up to the gate and waited. Nobody moved. Finally, he asked Connie, “aren’t you going to open the gate?”

Connie explained, “No normal wife would get out in this mess and get her boots muddy or her hair wet.” So Billy got out and opened the gate with no comment.

He backed up to the chute, got out again and opened the trailer gate but as he headed back to the pickup, the wind blew the gate shut. This happened a time or two more until he got a stick to prop it open.

Like a normal wife, Connie sat warm and dry in the cab of the pickup. As Billy got back into the truck, the stick on the gate slipped and it banged shut. Finally he said, “OK, you made your point. Please get out and hold the gate for me.”

Later, thinking to make up, Billy told his wife that he had noticed she had a flat on the inside dually of her feed truck. He told her if she would take the tire off, he would fix the flat while she fixed lunch. Her reply was that she thought a normal wife would be taken out to lunch.

That explosion passed as Billy realized they still had all afternoon to go. They still had time to put out another set of cattle and get them settled before dark. His thought was that he could go pick them up and Connie could go build the half mile of hot-wire fence he hadn’t had time to get to. Then they would meet to unload and put the cattle out.

Connie said she had other plans for the afternoon. She outlined a normal-wife strategy of going to the mall and perhaps getting her hair and nails done. Billy could then meet her and take to the new restaurant she had heard about.

The following day there were more cattle to pick up and move to wheat pasture.  When this was done, Billy noticed the hay trailer needed loaded as snow was forecast. Connie had always tended to this project.

Billy wasn’t that slow. He had become accustomed to her doing certain things. Today, so far, had contained no reference to “normal wives” and he had forgotten what had prompted him to mention it in the first place.

Connie informed him that all four tires on the hay trailer were flat and she recommended that he do something about it because flat tires didn’t fall within the parameters of normal wife expertise.

It didn’t happen often, but he gave up. He told her he could live without a normal wife, just please get back to doing what she had been doing. And, while she was at it, when she took the flats off and had them fixed, she may as well rotate the tires around the trailer too.

As a normal cowboy’s wife, she got right on it.

Julie, “normally” can be reached for comment a jcarternm@gmail.com.