A Day at the Zoo

A long line of strangers paraded before the Cowboy. Short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones, young ones. Each seemed desperate to present themselves as the individual the Cowboy knew they must be. Yet somehow he only saw them as a collective of strange animals, a slowly flowing procession of the human zoo.

The first to catch his eye was the snot nose lady. She of the dangling nose ring. The Transcendental Cowboy offered his handkerchief, then retracted it when he realized the globule he thought was a slimy snot ball about to slip off onto the lady’s coat was in fact just her choice of decoration. “I’m guessing you miss the third grade.” he said as he slinked off.

Then there was the middle aged white guy with his Asian family, dressed in the floor length coat. A coat that a twenty something Asian would have pulled off with style and grace. But the Cowboy thought, “This must be a gift from the family who doesn’t accept the fact that white dad is never going to be Asian, no matter how much he desires it.”

Later there was the pair of three hundred pound health care professionals, moving in unison behind their counter. The Transcendental Cowboy was transported to the Oklahoma City Zoo and the graceful ballet of the hippopotami. He snapped back in a brief moment and tried to give them the benefit of glandular disorder and an ignorance of modern medicine. “No reason a doctor would teach his staff medical knowhow. Better to keep them ignorant and sedentary and in their place.” he mused.

Soon the Transcendental Cowboy arrived to put himself in check, “Being a bit of a little bitch, today. Aren’t we?”

Never one to roll over for himself the Cowboy responded to his own suggestion, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” And he continued in a rant, “Why is it that I found in the traditional dress of the Tajik women such complete and obvious individuality? I mean, you could see it in their eyes. Yet when I see all the desperately contrived costumery of my own kind, it appears as some kind of cry for attention?”

“Well,” he responded in time, “you aren’t Tajik. Maybe if you were you would have thought that the girl with the dark scarf was desperately trying to distinguish herself from her sisters, all in their bright colors.”

The Transcendental Cowboy had to think about it for a while. Then finally he decided. “I’m certainly glad to have reached the age where I’m through being cool and can settle into my own little herd where I belong…
Curmudgeonly old white guys with no remaining sense of style.”

TC

Posted in: Universal Mind

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