Hello, friends!

I sure have fallen off of the blogging wagon. This introvert has been introverting and extroverting in so many ways that writing, well, took a lesser priority. A beloved word prompt site closed their virtual doors, and that also factored into my having drifted onto a different course.

But I miss this. So here I am. Back in the saddle again. Which reminds me…

When I was 15, my friends and I would use our fake id’s and go to this club called Cowboy in Houston, Texas. We went to happy hour, which was $2 frozen margaritas from 4- 5 PM.

I look back at us, and I marvel. The gall. I mean, we were breaking the law. Lying to our parents. Putting ourselves into adult company when we were (obviously) not mature enough to be there.

But boy, did we think we were all that and a bag of chips! We would style our big 80’s hair, dress like what we thought was grownup, and then drink as much as we could. The goal was to talk to guys, of course. We had little routines we followed – conversations we would fall into when we thought someone was overhearing or had come over to talk to us. Things we said in hopes of coming across as college-aged young women.

I wonder now – did we fool anybody? I actually ended up dating a few different men that I met when out and about. Cowboy wasn’t the only bar we frequented. Yikes. What was up with that?

We had a ball at the time. (I think.) It was fun being together. Breaking the rules. High school was such a maelstrom of social pressure. It was great to seek another environment in which to “rule.” Especially since we so totally did not rule in our high school peer group.

At the end of every happy hour, they played “Back in the Saddle Again” by Gene Audry.

To this day, when I hear it I am transported back to “the day” when life was happy hours and foolish fun. The time before the happy hours became a problem.

And while I know that even then, I was trying to fill a hole inside with something outside of me that would never do the job, I do remember those days with fondness. We had a naivety that I miss. A foolish gumption. A blissful ignorance.

I could use a bit of that gumption now. That naive action-taking without a care for consequences that I did not believe really applied to me. Of course, it all did eventually catch up to me, as all such things do.

But I do feel a fondness for the me that I was then. And that song always makes me smile.

#Cowboy #youthfulescapades #reminiscing

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