Goodies and Baddies...

I used to be a cowboy. No I really did, we all did, the boys on our road - we were all cowboys.

At three, pre-school with absolutely no worries, I was a happy-go-lucky type of cowboy. The sort of cowboy with a girl in every town (not that I was interested in girls back then) and a wandering, bunkhouse, move ‘em up, move ‘em out, Wagon Train sort of attitude to life. The kind of easy going, take it easy, one day at a time, howdy pardner cowboy, who we all loved to watch on the black and white rented television sets that sat in the corners of all of our single-bulb living rooms.

I remember being a baddie - masked, bandanna covering my mouth, the rustler, the bank robber, the one that shot the old man riding shotgun on the stagecoach, my twin holstered six guns out of my holster in a flash. That’s me – the baddie in the tartan trousers, the one with the huge smile on his face, standing outside number 57. I could be a baddy from the time I got up until the time I went to bed, shooting at lawmen, robbing banks, stealing horses, drinking whisky (water) in the local saloon standing on a chair at our wooden kitchen draining board.

By the time I’d reached four and a half and was off to school I’d decided that being the good guy was no more the thing - so adios my tartan trousers, goodbye mask, so long cheeky smile, and howdy Mr good guy. That’s the thing about the ‘going to school’ thing - the worry begins and you have to change, stop shooting people, no more ambushing stagecoaches, starting brawls in bars. You have to become more sensible, measured, have to be liked, have to conform. You don’t see it happening at the time, it seems the right thing to do, it’s easier, people expect it, you have responsibilities (ink monitor) - being a baddie isn’t an option and old Miss Mathews took a very dim view of having baddies in her class.

Just look at the second picture of me eighteen months or so later. I’m still a cowboy. My hat’s still black, I’m still wearing a bandanna - but now my hat has a silly white fringe and my trousers, T-shirt, even my bandanna are white(ish).Instead of my six gun I’m carrying an old tin cash box like some kind of cowboy banker. And worse of all I’m wearing sandals - and I’m wearing them with white socks. No wonder my smile’s disappeared. I look almost sad, see that faraway look? I think I’m yearning for the good old days back when I was a baddy and life was an exciting adventure of murder and robbery from dawn till dusk. Regrets and I’m not even five…sounds about right.

Yep, I used to be a cowboy. Sometimes a baddy, but generally a goody – which about sums up my life really - I know which of those two cowboys I’ve come most to resemble and he isn’t wearing tartan trousers.

I wonder how big my smile would be now if I’d decided to stay a baddy?