Cockadoodledo...

My run in with that crazy lady in the robe yesterday got me thinking. No, I did not start thinking about my own mortality. In fact, that did not even cross my mind. You know what else did not cross my mind, why I don’t own a robe. I’ve always thought robe people were only one step away from snapping and walking down the street in their robes. Now I know that’s a fact.

It’s clear to me that if you own a robe, there is a 95 percent chance that the cops are going to pick you up and bring you back to your house as you mumble to yourself incoherently. The only real question that remains is if you will or won’t have clothes on underneath. And that really is the only thing separating you from a misdemeanor or a felony.

What did cross my mind, however, was a memory I had about this one-eyed rooster. For those of you who are confused at this point, shame on you, read the story below and then come back to this one. Anyway, we were so proud of this one-eyed rooster and how tough it was that we challenged our friend down the street to a cock-fight.

This rooster had been terrorizing us, our friends and anyone who visited our house for months. We had built this rooster up in our minds and we were solely and firmly convinced that this was the badest, meanest, most despicable rooster in town. This brazen belief in our rooster led us to taunt our neighbor, who also lived on a farm, three houses down from us, about his cowardly roosters. The challenging started at school, during the last ten minutes and met a full boil as the bell sounded.

My brothers and I could not believe our luck as we bounded home. We ran in, found our dad and somehow convinced him to grab the rooster and high tail it down to our neighbor’s house for the cock-fight of the century.

Secretly, each and every one of us believed that we had been training this rooster to be even tougher than if it was left on its own. We had been getting it cardio by running from it as fast as we could; teaching it to dodge objects by throwing our basketball at it as hard as we could and helping it focus as we cried as loud as we could when it started after us. I mean, this thing would chase us every single day. Every day I spent some time and energy thinking about how I was going to avoid this rooster. It was terrifying.

As we walked to our neighbor’s house, my two brothers and I confidently followed on our father’s heels, our chests puffed out; our muscles flexed, our egos full. We were going to show the neighborhood that our rooster was the toughest, the strongest and the most aggressive rooster in the town. We all took pride in knowing that as our rooster displayed its aggressions, we would somehow be validated from running from it for such a long time.

As we reached our destination, the crowd swelled to like 10 or 11 people. Really, no one was around, but we felt like the entire world was watching. My dad reached down, put our rooster in a makeshift ring and started the fight. The anticipation was palpable.

But as my dad backed away, and the neighbor’s rooster approached, our mighty rooster, who carried our hearts and beliefs on its back, fled the scene and ran like a, well, chicken.

He did not make one peck, poke or motion toward our neighbor’s rooster. He simply tucked his head and ran as fast as he could, away from the fight and away from our dreams of neighborhood superiority.

My dad bent over, picked up our defeated champion and we headed back to our house, heads hung low; hopes dashed, faith crushed. What we thought was a tough bird had turned into a cowering failure.

As we reached our destination, my dad put the rooster on the ground and we turned to walk into our house. The walk, however, turned into a dead run as he started chasing and pecking us again. He scratched my brother, clawed my dad and pecked my foot. He was flying around like the terminator we all knew him to be.

The moral of the story? That rooster was one crazy bird. I mean, really, I never understood that thing.