As with many disasters, it all started with good intentions.
For context, my wife is a horse girl. She has been riding horses since she was five and is obsessed with these expensive ungulates. If it were up to her, we would hang out in the stable all day watching horse movies. I have already set a limit of five horse paintings in the house.
I am definitely an animal lover, but I have my limits. I try to spread it out so I don’t get a horse overdose. In my continued efforts to be a good partner, I was trying to plan a date and found out the Tampa Rodeo was in town. I got us tickets and Laura was thrilled. It was the perfect middle ground for both of us.
The event featured western-style riding, including barrel racing, bronco riding, and finally the highlight: bull riding. There’s even a fun intermission where they stuff people into giant inflatable balls like hamsters and have them run around the field while an angry bull bucks, sending them flying through the air like deformed frisbees. How this is even legal, or a good idea from a liability standpoint, is beyond me. But it makes for divine entertainment.
The rodeo started at 5 p.m. But it wouldn’t be another hour or two before the real action began. There’s an opening event where they have kids ride sheep — with their arms and legs wrapped around the sheep’s torso — holding on for dear life as the audience laughs. It’s a strangely dystopian sight. The normal laws of humanity seem to disappear in these arenas. Basic standards of parenting disappear because people seem to be okay with their kid being thrown into a pen with animals.
Laura came home late, so I urged her to get ready quickly. She hurried to shower and we headed out. But my haste would be for nothing.
We drove from our home in downtown Tampa to Brandon. If you’ve ever lived in Florida, you know it’s mostly creepy swamps, with a cluster of Jesus signs and adult DVD stores standing alone without a building in sight, followed by the occasional big city where normalcy reintroduces itself like an ex you never thought you’d miss.
This became apparent as we drove past the ecocide hell of Brandon’s suburbs and saw more and more wetlands and swampy areas.
We arrived at the event and were greeted by PETA protesters. They were all women dressed as commandos who gave us the middle finger at the entrance and shouted through a megaphone, making my tinnitus worse.
As I pulled up, I saw in the distance a mega-lift truck, with a huge back end with roller coaster-style seats inside. It was weaving in a field, shooting up mud and debris like waves from a boat. In the back, a dozen kids and parents were laughing and enjoying the ride, as plumes of black smoke rose into the air, making smoke rings in the air, “How’s that for the carbon footprint?”
We got out of the car in the long, jungle-like parking lot and started walking toward the event. We quickly realized that we were being swarmed by mosquitoes that were clearly obsessed with me. I had never experienced such relentlessness. The moment I swiped my hand to wave them away, more appeared in their place. They tried to get into my mouth, drink from my eyes, and go up my nose.
What they were looking for, I don’t know. But this went on all the way through the walk, and all the way to the fair.
This was also the point where I realized we had arrived too early. I had misread the tickets I had purchased, thinking they said the event would run from 5pm to 8pm. Now I realized the carnival started at 5pm and the rodeo at 8pm. I explained the bad news to Laura, feeling like an idiot.
Then I said desperately, “Laura, I don’t think I can take these little creatures. Can we go to the store and get some?”
It was a small indoor arena with booths selling everything from cowboy hats to Verizon internet to dog supplements. It was air conditioned and bug-free. So I breathed a sigh of relief as we walked inside. But I realized we still had two hours before the rodeo started. I wasn’t sure how we were going to make it.
I turned to Laura and said, “We have to find a way to deal with these creatures, honey. This is a nightmare.”
“Let’s see if we can find a vendor who sells bug spray,” she said with her usual hopeful optimism.
We had zero luck until we arrived at a shop selling herbal supplements for dogs, which was just outside the entrance.
Laura asked the nice lady inside: “Do you also happen to sell insect spray?”
A man appeared from behind and said, “Oh yeah! Try this cinnamon spray that’s specifically designed to keep mosquitoes away (from animals). I just put some on. It might burn at first, but it’ll go away on its own, don’t worry.”
As he says this, I am still plagued by mosquitoes.
“Okay, here’s my credit card,” I said, and proceeded to spend the worst $5 I’ve ever spent.
I sprayed it on my hand and then started rubbing it on my neck, face and shirt. I would have snorted it if they had said that would work. Then I gave it to Laura and she started doing the same. I felt a slight burning sensation and the mosquitoes definitely started to disappear, at least temporarily.
Two minutes later, Laura and I were seated at a picnic table in the main area. She sat in front of me as we both drank two Miller Lites (the bartender looked at me funny when I asked if they had craft beer).
Then I noticed that Laura had a strange brown streak under her neck that I hadn’t noticed before. It looked like she had been wearing a shirt in the sun earlier that day.
Just before I mentioned the sunburn, she said, “Sean, your face and skin are very red. You’re going to be all red right now.”
I definitely felt like my skin was still burning. I said, “Can you take a picture of me so I can see?”
Then I looked and thought, “Yeah. That’s pretty bad.”
Laura wasn’t doing much better (she forbade me to use a photo of her situation in this article).
For the record, the burning never really “went away,” as the nice man had so confidently assured us. The fact that a stall was selling this cinnamon bug spray for dogs was equally disturbing. If it did this to our skin, at least we had the ability to talk about it and fix it. Imagine a dog or horse having to deal with that. I was tempted to tell the ladies at PETA about this stall.
We decided that this date couldn’t have gone much worse. The bugs had become even more aggressive and seemed to love this new spray. We still had two hours before the rodeo actually started. So we called it a day.
We stopped at a gas station on the way home and walked in like we had just gotten off a shift in Chernobyl. We bought bottled water, grabbed big handfuls of paper towels from the bathroom, and started wiping ourselves off in the car, trying to wipe away the whole day.
“How did you not expect this,” I thought. “You’ve had Goldschlager (with cinnamon) before. If it sends a ring of fire down your esophagus, what did you expect your skin to experience?”
We went home, showered and waited for our redness to go away, which took a few hours. I was surprised we didn’t get into a car accident on the way back.
Luckily we didn’t have to worry about dinner. We had enough insects to last us.
I am a former financial analyst turned writer from sunny Tampa, Florida. I started writing eight years ago and fell in love with the craft. My goal is to deliver nonfiction, story-driven content to help us live better and maximize our potential.
