Wrangler Gets Smacked

Bless his heart. He couldn't have seen it coming.

Meet "T". Our wrangler for the day.

He is so cutesy, right?

He really is just the cutest little thing. T (his first initial) was our guide/wrangler at the dude ranch we went to in Bandera. There was a helper, N (a girl), too. He was our lasso trainer, he took us on our trail ride, ya know...things of that nature.
While we were riding, N was in the front and T was near me, so I started in on him. How long have you been here? Do you work a lot? How did you start doing this? Yadda yadda.
Reader's digest version: it involves a girl.

Boom. I'm all over it.
Well, there's drama.
Turns out, N is the girl. AND she is the ranch owner's only daughter. T wasn't dealing with the drama very well. He got pretty snippety a few times and I didn't particularly love the way he was talking to her. Hmmm...we were gonna have to do something about that.

Meanwhile, Spouse was cracking up because he knew I was about to go into Counselor Mode with Ole Boy.

Next scene: He is doing something with the horses and I walk over. "So she's the girl?"
"She's the girl."
"Dude. How old are you?"
"17."
"How old is she?"
"17."

Oh. OHHHHH!  It explained so much! I thought he was an icky early-twenty-something with a teenaged girl!

We chatted some more.
And here it comes:
She started walking over to where Mark, T and I were standing and T says, "What do you want?"
SMACK!

I did. I smacked him on his sweaty back. "You can't talk to her like that!"
"I'm tired of dealing with her crap."
"OK, that's grand. But she is a girl and you absolutely can not speak to her that way, Son."
"Ow, dang. That hurt." Rubs back.

Bless his heart. I didn't have a flip-flop.

We all talked a bit more and he got some serious relationship training. Somewhere in that time he got smacked again. He took it.

I explained to him that 'It's not what you say it's how you say it'!! I gave him some ideas on how to change his tone and words and he half-heartedly tried it with her. It was funny.

Seriously, it was good for us both. He needed the training and I desperately needed a trainee!

I'm moving forward in faith that his life was changed with each smack. He felt the love.

Do you see how much I miss my College Crew??