My Old Cowboy Boots

The summer of 1981 was a turning point year for me, I had just turned 18 and was full of piss and vinegar as they say. I got myself into bit of a mess that involved a boy, and I was having a hard time dealing with this fact and found it impossible to even speak to my parents. Knowing the reactions that I would receive from them, I put it off as long as possible.

I had a friend named Cindy, and she was pretty much my best friend. We worked together at this burger joint in the small Texas town that we lived in. On our days off we would hang out at the mall or just at her house listening to music, and smoking cigarettes, and the occasional bottle of beer. One day we both went shopping and decided to buy ourselves some cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. Urban Cowboy was all the rage and we thought we were hot in them boots and hats. Ha, we were so silly.

One day we were especially restless and decided to take a little trip to Houston, which was about 4 hours down the road, the only thing was we didn’t have much money and we were rebels without a car as well, the whole idea was to visit her brother that lived in Houston and spend the weekend with him, just hanging out. Well we got this crazy idea to hitchhike to Houston and it proved to be a very bad mistake.

I never thought much about the idea of hitchhiking or even considered the dangers of it, so we stuck our thumbs out and got to walking down the road. We actually got lucky and the first person to pick us up took us all the way into Houston, he was a trucker and was really friendly to talk to and all, but what we didn’t know, was that he stole our money from our purses when we stopped to use the bathroom. Being as naïve and stupid as we were, we didn’t even consider that he might steal the little money we managed to scrape together. We also didn’t consider what he had in mind for us.

Well needless to say there was some other horrible stuff that happened that day on our trip to Houston that I care not talk about, but I just wanted to get this much off my chest I guess. The whole day is really a surreal blur, but I still remember it like it was yesterday nonetheless. I changed that day, I guess you could say that my innocence was lost on so many levels and I wasn’t the same person after that day. But it was the boots I was wearing that actually saved my life that day.

You see my friend and I were in a heap of trouble with this man who had picked us up and he took us to an abandoned apartment where he tried to do some unmentionable things to us. I guess you could say that the Lord was with me that day because I said a prayer and kicked the man as hard as I could in his face with my boots, and when I kicked him all I heard was a very loud crack coming from his nose. I saw lots of blood and the loudest yelp I ever heard from a full grown man. My friend and I ran out of there and escaped whatever horrible things this guy had planned for us. Its funny because I never wore boots before and never wore them after, but I still think about those boots and wonder what would have happened, had I not worn them. It really makes me think about how stupid and naïve we were, and how we could have ended up being a statistic on the 5 O’clock news.

I sure I have changed quite a bit since that day, but I still cannot forget this horrible man, or what he looks like. His awful face is forever etched into my memory. Thanks to him I have had problems with anxiety ever since, thanks to him I still look under my bed, (this one has really been hard for my husband to understand), thanks to him I look over my shoulder just a little too much wherever I go, and thanks to him I lost that carefree innocent demeanor that I carried with me everywhere I went. No matter how hard I have tried, I have never been able to shake that awful feeling of fear and anxiety that he put into me that day. I still have it but it is buried deep inside me now and thankfully, I have mastered the art of ignoring it, I know its still there, it knows I know its still there, but I do ignore it. I still wonder about those boots though.