I spent a recent evening at the gym, chasing myself on the treadmill and watching two bewildering TV spectacles: on one screen, Wall Street news; yon another, a genuine Wild West rodeo.
Comparisons between the Wall Street rodeo and the one involving actual Stetsons were startling. Two arenas full of egos, fanfare, anxious spectators, and cowboys. Macho men riding bucking bulls until they get thrown off - surviving for even a few seconds earns you huge cash prizes. Just ask the geniuses who've been riding our bull market for a living.
The less skilled get impaled and trampled, but, hey, it's a free market.
I couldn't get very excited about the bareback riders, the calf-ropers, the bull riders. Bandy-legged men have never interested me. Men who eagerly do that which gets them paralyzed, maimed, or killed - in other words, fools - do nothing for my Nielsen ratings.
But the cowgirls! Poetry in motion, blond hair flying, tassels waving, gorgeous horses nimbly barrel-riding their way to rodeo glory, while their riders sport snakeskin boots. That's the stuff dreams are made of. I'll be a cowgirl when I grow up.
Then a commercial came on for Wrangler jeans, featuring a lanky cowboy ambling his way across the horizon while the announcer drawled that Wrangler's rugged styling and relaxed fit were perfect for chasing, and I am not making this up, "cows, kids, women, and dreams."
If there had been a number to call to order me some, I would have jumped off that treadmill and hijacked the fitness center phone. Cows, kids, women, and dreams! All from a pair of pants? Boy, howdy!
Cows, kids, women, and dreams. It floats trippingly off the tongue. Some ad executive made his career on that toothsome combination. The new measure of a man is not his 32 waist and 34 legs, and certainly not his stock portfolio. It's his wallet full of cows, kids, women, and dreams.
Though the price of beeves on the cattle exchange may rise and fall, cows are cows, and if you've got 'em, you've got 'em. No swanky-pants day trader can cause their weight to plummet 10 percent in a day. Cows equal wealth. Rugged 'ol carved-from-the-soil, earned-it-the-hard-way wealth.
Kids are both symbols of virility, and tidings of hope for the economic future. If we would restore America to its former economic glory we should all breed like rabbits, raising up future consumers who will work, save, borrow, spend, buy jeans, and eat beef. That bulging boomer generation fueled 60 years of economic vitality, and now, darn their hides, they're pulling their assets out of the stock market to spend on face lifts and teeth whitening. Hiss-boo!
Now is the time for all cowboys and cowgirls to come to the aid of the party, and do what cowgirls and cowboys do after honky-tonks close.
And that leads artfully to women. Women are to be chased. No further explanation needed.
Dreams. Nothing's more American than chasing your dreams. And if you've watched your dreams wither by following your broker's advice, you may well want to pull on a pair of Wranglers and chase him down, maybe rope him and tie him, too, before he enjoys what would have been your comfortable retirement somewhere in Argentina. Wrangler's rugged styling and relaxed fit will give you an edge over his tightly-tailored Italian suits as you sprint through the halls of Logan Airport in hot pursuit. Cowgirl boots give you just the right pointy steel toe for kicking.
But if you're not a cowboy - or cowgirl - at heart, if you prefer to remain a law-abiding and nonviolent observer of the Wall Street Rodeo, by all means, stick to sweatpants and chase yourself on your treadmill while the rodeo clown politicians do a little halftime wrangling of their own.
At least you'll get some exercise.
Yee-haw!
Julie Berry is the author of "The Amaranth Enchantment," coming March 3 from Bloomsbury USA. She lives in Maynard, and can be reached at julie@julieberrybooks.com.
