Rushes:
I’m sure I looked bad on TV. Not sure what part shows up, but I’m sure I’ll be made out like a fool. Not that it matters, but I don’t even get a credit. Stay tuned, it’s ABC’s “wife swap,” tentative air date is April 24, 7:00 PM.
There was a telling moment, missed by the camera, and missed by the swapped wife. The dad? Cowboy. I don’t mean, like, a city cowboy. I mean, like the real deal. He is a championship roper.
“I rode bulls until I got too big,” he told me, off camera.
He is, literally, a national champion, rodeo. Team roping. Ranch in El Paso, ranch in Central Texas. Runs close to a hundred head of horses. I was standing there, outside, in Hawaiian shirt and sandals, my hair blowing in the wind.
One of the scenes that no one caught, he’s got his four kids, three girls and a little cowboy, all lined up on the couch and the kids were getting restless. One of the little girls comes over and squirms repeatedly, in an annoying manner, next to her dad. Body language? “I’m bored.” She started to squirm and her dad, he touched her head and tried to shush her, and when that didn’t work, he gently slapped her face.
It wasn’t malicious, there was no lack of affection, it was like a love tap. As a gesture, that could be interpreted several ways, and especially out of context. In context? It was appropriate, even gentle
Everyone missed it. Hence the problem.
I’ve got no idea how this will turn out. That cowboy? I have tremendous respect for him. I’m also sure that kind of fatherly, daddy, gesture could easily be misinterpreted by many. And missed by the camera.
Later, while talking outside, I noticed his attire. Spurs, with a small, rounded rowelled-like disk.
When I was drifting off to sleep, I kept thinking I missing some aspect. That poor Gemini girl. Assailed on all sides. Gently proselyting, a kinder, more gentle way of living. Beset from all sides. Buried under a truckload of manure.
I just felt so sorry for that poor Gemini. Heart so much in the right place and against a wall of, well, a truckload of?
Scabies:
There was a news item about a local outbreak of Scabies. I listened while one friend kept insisting that it was “Scavies,” and then spelled it out, “S-C-A-V-V-I-E-S.”
It’s a borderland speech idiom.
Unrelated:
That’s funny, I knew that already.
How not to pull a jeep out of the mud.
Big diamond heist.
Previously.
