It has been years since my last monster truck rally; a dozen, maybe. I care about monster trucks almost as much as I care about who wins this season’s American Idol, which is to say, not at all. But my sons Jordan and James both loved ‘em, James especially. So once or twice a year we’d go.
Monster truck rallies, for those of you unfamiliar with pork rinds or chewing tobacco, feature large, heavily modified pickup trucks rumbling over smaller, less testosterone-infused vehicles. They’re loud, smelly, crowded affairs, and a lot more fun than I’m making them sound here.
Monster truck rallies are, for the most part, a “guy thing.” There’s a lot of shouting, jostling and other rude behavior that most guys keep under wraps when their wives are watching. Occasionally, there’s even a fight or two. Just guys—drunk, redneck guys for the most part—doing what guys do.
Now, I consider myself to be an urbane, sophisticated man about town, so I try to avoid inebriated hand-to-hand combat with guys named Bubba as often as possible. But sometimes, a situation arises that so threatens the very fabric of civilization that I just have to make a stand.
Such was the case when I fought over the T-shirt.
The T-shirt was shot in my general direction from a T-shirt-shooting cannon while crews were busy dragging a recently-capsized Ford F250 out of the arena. They do stuff like that at monster truck rallies to fill in the few quiet moments between Yugo crushings.
The T-shirt tried to sail over my head and into the bleachers behind me, but at the last second I leapt up and snagged it. No right fielder making the winning World Series catch ever felt more satisfaction than I did as I pulled that shirt out of the air.
But as I did, the guy sitting directly behind me tried to grab it out of my hand! I turned around, thinking he might be kidding. I had caught the shirt, fair and square, after all.
He was a big guy, hairy beer belly protruding impressively over his belt and from under his wife-beater T-shirt. And he wasn’t kidding; he intended to steal my T-shirt with a stadium full of monster truck fans watching the misdemeanor unfold in real time on the Jumbo-tron screen.
Now, I cared no more about that T-shirt than I did about monster trucks or American Idol, but there was a principle at stake here! I refused to let go. I pulled. He pulled. We pulled.
It soon became apparent he wasn’t strong enough to pull the shirt out of my vise-like grip. Sadly, I wasn’t able to pull it out of his. So we sat there, the two of us, hanging onto our corners of the T-shirt. For 90 minutes. Every so often, one of us would give the thing a half-hearted tug, like a dog wrestling for a rope he’s grown tired of.
Neither of us said a word, we just hung onto the shirt as monster trucks continued to do their thing in the arena below.
Eventually, the last truck rumbled out the door. The guys hawking cotton candy and $4 bottles of water called it a day. And still the big guy and I maintained our stubborn grips.
I realized one of us was going to have to give it up. Either that or we’d wind up spending eternity together, joined at the shirt. I decided I could probably do better by way of a life partner, so I let go my end. Bubba shambled away in triumph, the horribly mangled T-shirt dangling from his fur-knuckled hand.
There’s a moral here somewhere, but being the kind of guy who enjoys monster truck rallies, I have no idea what it is.
More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.
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