Poetry by day, bull riding by night

When I was a kid, I hated rednecks.

Every other hormone-riddled Luke Bryan wannabe adorned themselves in camo like they’d be cornering a white-tailed deer just after first period, and half of them only dressed the part.

So, a couple of Saturdays ago, when my wife and the mini-me rolled into JR’s Rodeo, I felt as out of place as a kitten in a dogfight.

People filtered between cars, unironically sporting clean cowboy hats and clean cowboy boots, looking like every Levi’s commercial Beyoncé has ever starred in.

“Should I have worn something else?” Wife asked timidly. She’s from the Midwest and they like to be what they call “Iowa Nice” — accommodating, non-judgmental, not me.

“You don’t have to play dress-up to go to a rodeo,” I said, more confident than I should have been in my slightly dirty Converses and Crocodile Dundee graphic t-shirt.

Not Crocodile Dundee, the man. A crocodile dressed as Crocodile Dundee.

As we slid into the wooden bleachers surrounding the arena at Burke County Fairgrounds, I groaned.

We’d been in the car for six hours that day — three hours out to Southern Pines for Daughter to receive an award for poetry and three hours back — and few things are as pleasant on the rump as wooden bleachers that felt like playing see-saw with Andre the Giant.

The round trip had been for the kiddo, who took second in an environmental poetry competition, writing an abecedarian naming animals like Noah visiting the Amazon. She’d gotten the idea from a prose poem I wrote about a cult leader obsessed with achieving godhood.

I’m glad that the apple rolled just a bit further than the roots.

The event, led by the North Carolina Poetry Society, trudged across two hours for the children’s poetry readings and awards. Aside from my spawn, the family was again a bit oddly outfitted.

Suits and dresses filled the other seats. Respectable people with respectable jobs and respectable upbringings.

We were in blue jeans, joggers, and tennis shoes. Daughter, of course, donned a black dress and looked like she would be delivering a eulogy, but at least she fit the part.

“Are we underdressed?” I asked as we walked in, less than half as certain as I would be that evening, mixing in with the Burke County Clint Eastwoods.

“We’re fine,” Wife said confidently, the most relaxed of the bunch.

I sipped my cup o’ joe with my pinky out just to be safe.

The aroma of coffee beans and old books wafted around the crowd as elementary schoolers to undergraduates read poems covering everything from the environment to an aching nostalgia for countries they could never return to.

That felt lightyears away from the stench of cigarette smoke prowling around the crying babies that we’d sit near just six hours later.

Both carried that foreboding sense of displacement that unrepeatable moments often have as they slip through your fingers and run down your wrists.

“Yeehaw,” Daughter smirked as the first cowboys rode into the arena in their Canadian Tuxedos, shaking me from my daze.

I reminded her to be respectful, as these people can fight, and the likelihood of an elementary schooler fist-fighting a grown adult is not as high as said elementary schooler’s father getting his “clothes folded while wearing them,” as she would say.

Then came the bucking horses. The races. The sheep in the mutton-busting, galloping across the arena and slinging children underfoot, occasionally trampling the tykes.

By the time the bulls came, the whole family was enthralled, balancing on the wooden seats and gulping down the thrills.

“That was ratchet and I loved it,” Daughter said as we poured out of the fairgrounds with the rest of the cowboys.

I kicked up some dirt, looked back at the horses, and considered, for a brief moment, buying a hat to commemorate.