I put the key in the ignition of my pickup truck to leave the parking lot of the Brookshire Brothers grocery store this afternoon and the old truck faithfully started one more time.   I am a regular customer for the blue plate special the grocery serves daily and stopped today on the way to visit my mom to pick up something for lunch.   A large newer white pickup truck caught my attention as it pulled into the parking space to my left and the driver kept the engine running.    That annoyed me because I wasn’t sure what he planned to do and backing up in parking lots has become an adventure for me since my eyesight is akin to the old cartoon character Mr. Magoo’s.   I was so preoccupied with watching the guy to my left I hadn’t once glanced to my right.   When I did, this is what I saw…

Only in Texas, I’m sure.

I had an almost uncontrollable urge to abandon my Dodge Dakota and run flying to the horse, leap in the saddle and gallop wildly out of the parking lot with the wind blowing my hair around me in swirls!   Ah, so many problems with that fantasy, though.   It’s unlikely I could run anywhere these days and certainly not a prayer of leaping into a saddle.  Ouch!   And as for the hair blowing in the wind, Brad Pitt might pull that look off, but my hair hasn’t been long enough to make a swirl since I was in grammar school many moons ago.

I shoulda been a cowboy.   Instead, I was a CPA.    A stockbroker.   A financial advisor.    A vice president of investments.   A college accounting instructor.   A church minister of music.    But never a cowboy except when I was a little girl growing up in rural East Texas and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.   So, today when I saw the riderless horse standing quietly next to me in the parking lot, I was reminded of the cowboy I wasn’t.

It’s okay, though.   In real life it’s much easier to ride a desk than a horse and allow books and movies and television westerns to feed my fantasies of the cowboy’s romantic nomadic existence.

Hmmm…and maybe it wasn’t the horses I was interested in anyway.