Riding high – boots and all

One of my childhood dreams was to be cowboy. I don’t know if it was because of television series like The High Chaparral or movies like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but I was hooked.

While most of my friends always wanted to be the sheriffs, being an outlaw was my dream. Everything about it was desirable: riding horses, always camping and robbing banks.

And did the outlaws rob banks! They’d tie a handkerchief around their faces, storm into a bank, fire a few rounds into the roof and demand the money.

Then they’d hop onto their horses and make a dusty getaway.

Back then it all made sense, especially the handkerchief around the face. It was, of course, to mask their identities.

I tried it a few times. But not in a bank. I’d storm into the house and demand whatever sweets or treats I knew my mother had.

But my mother always recognised me, despite my perfect handkerchief disguise.

I figured she must have recognised me by my white cowboy boots. To be honest, they weren’t real cowboy boots. It was my sister’s boots she wore during a dance competition to the tune of These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.

After my failed robbery, I’d slink out of the house, get onto my little green bicycle – which I imagined to be beautiful, black horse – and peddle into the sunset, planning my next felony.

Hop, skip and jump forward into adulthood and being an outlaw still has some false sense of romanticism to it.

The other day I was in a bank for the first time since the lockdown.

Striding in, wearing my favourite boots – brown CATs in this case – and masked exactly as I had been in my dreams all those years ago, I felt a titillating adrenaline rush.

I glanced up, unrealistically expecting to see some bullet holes from previous robberies.

For a moment there, I had become the cowboy I always dreamt of being.

Then they called my number. I just hope the bank approves my loan.