If it's the mutton that gets busted, why does my head hurt?

There are times as a parent when you agonize over whether you are making the right decision, doing the right thing for your child. And then there are times when you rush headlong into a dangerous, stupid and in all ways ridiculous activity with your child without so much as a tiny voice of caution to get in your way. In other words, sometimes you take your 31/2 year old boys "mutton busting."



Mutton busting involves taking small children -- under 6 years and 60 lbs -- putting them in protective vests and helmets, sticking 'em on sheep and releasing said sheep into an arena while an audience screams and yells encouragement. I thought it was 6 and up, but our neighbor assured us it was 6 and under. So of course, that means we had to check it out and see if the boys could be convinced.

The object is to try to stay on for 6 seconds. The grand prize winner for the whole fair gets $500 or something and a fancy belt buckle. Now, I realize this is insane. But I actually found myself thinking, hmm. Maybe one of the boys will turn out to be a mutton busting genius. Wow. I hope one of them doesn't get called back to the finals and the other one not.

In hindsight, the helmets and vests should have raised some concern. Or the notion that staying on for 6 seconds is a supreme achievement. But the first real consideration that we might not be making a wise parenting choice came when a fellow parent asked, seconds before we put our children on these beasts, "What's the difference between doing this and just throwing our kids in there."
"We won't get in trouble for this," another parent helpfully answered.
"Heh heh heh. Wha?" I thought.
The first one out the shoot was a little girl. As soon as they released the sheep, she was pretty much on her butt. I don't know that it was her fall -- it happened so fast I'm not sure he saw it -- or the loudness of the crowd, but Chas quickly decided he would have none of it, despite the fact that just minutes before he had been jumping up and down in anticipation of riding a sheep.

That meant Eddie got scooped up and put on Chas' sheep. Before he could register what was happening, let alone raise a protest, the sheep was released and he was on the ground. I could tell right away he was crying. Hard. He told us his head was hurt. Before long, he fell asleep, leading Steph to wonder aloud if he could be concussed. Great, one more thing to worry about. I worried that we may have knocked some of the smart out of him, but Steph said he's still got enough intelligence to know that he doesn't want to ride a sheep ever again. I'm fairly sure, however, that we knocked at least a couple of points off his eventual SAT scores. If he just misses getting into the college of his choice, I'll be bitterly muttering "Mutton-busting!"





He remains bitter and says the sheep riding was not great. Chas is happy with his last-minute decision not to go. And I figure the $10 we paid is simply akin to a small fine for really crappy parenting.