Rodeos Seeking New Talent

Part 28 of 30

The Mam & Pap

Royal Splendid Traveling Rodeo

Everyone of us from time to time is faced with what will be our occupation, our work in the world, what we’ll occupy ourselves with, or what work we might be called upon to do. Maybe our first job. Maybe our second, third, and so on. Say we get fired a lot, we need something else. Because work is a task that has to be done. And as a task it’s never good — ideally — to leave it to someone else who’s simply going to screw it up. I still insist it’s true, If you want it done right, do it yourself.

The rodeo’s no different. And I’m trying really hard here not to be vain, apparently self-sufficient, the center of the universe when it comes to doing things in the best, most appropriate way. But if you’re like me, it’s likely that the rodeo could be your ideal path. If so, as we say in the horse line, Giddyup. Climb aboard, mount that thang, there could very well be a horse in your future and it’s not going to break itself. You’ll be with it to nurture it along. It’ll whinny when it sees you, and that's a heartwarming start to a rich, full lifetime together.

You’ve probably already heard counselors telling you to widen your perspective on occupations. ‘Don’t lock yourself into something so narrow that there’s not a steady demand for your skills.’ It’s my opinion that a lot of this nervous-nelly hand-wringing and sobbing is perfectly true. Say you had the option of going into medicine, being a doctor. As long as man gets sick, he’ll always need a doctor to help him get better; that’s the argument. But remember what we said about widening your perspective? Because it really could happen that someone will invent a single pill that immediately cures every ailment, from the common cold all the way up to broken bones, Italian breath, dog breath, and rickets. Then where will you be? On the scrapheap of destiny.

My recommendation — and I say this to everyone whether they have the aptitude for it or not — is rodeo work. The only way rodeo work could dry up and blow away is if mankind in his foolishness blew up the earth and wiped out his existence. In which eventuality doctors would also be completely worthless. But what have doctors ever been able to do to make the rodeo what it is and what it could become? Next to nothing. Setting fractures, checking out the health of animals, resettling the clanging in clowns’ heads when it becomes a distraction, and prescribing pills to help numb the pain of pounding stakes. I suppose a doctor’s value is actually immense, but, c’mon, even the highly rated professions are probably in some sense overrated. Can anyone just agree with me on anything?

And with the rodeo they’re always begging for workers. The various communist “counselors” that schools tend to get are always down on any occupation perceived to be off the beaten path. “The rodeo’s going the way of the dinosaur,” they prattle. Which is pure horseshoot for various reasons. Obviously it would decline if there were no workers to go into it, sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy for the pathetic counselors. We could say the same thing for counseling. It’s going the way of the dinosaurs. Then I get a job as a counselor to tamp down all this dinosaur anxiety; dinosaurs are virtually extinct, so people need to quit worrying so much about them.