You Can't Mix Crimson and Cream with the Brightest Orange!

I wrote this piece about ten days ago just for fun. Mother urged me to select it for this week's posting.
The Bedlam Clothes Battle

                I am a cow herder by default. My training and capability are lacking. However, my low tolerance of cold temperature has improved. For so many years, I read to my third grade students The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Many winter days have reminded me to recall Pa Ingalls’ words to Laura when they lived in the harsh weather of Dakota Territory, “Don’t fear the cold.” With those words warming me, I press on.

                My clothing has been, after a fashion, inherited from the man who really knew how to care for cattle. When I read his journal of forty years ago, I realize he has forgotten more about bovine care than I could acquire if I study the species eight hours daily for the rest of my life! Nevertheless, I have begun wearing an OSU starter jacket of Dad’s that has just been hanging in the entry closet. Bottom line – it is warm! Mother found a long crown stocking cap in brown. Dad never liked to wear it. He preferred the fur hat given to him by Angie and Ben. Many times I heard my grandma, Gladys Rainey Smith's voice lamenting that a woman can't have good hair when she's working on the farm, so I had always rejected hairstyle-destroying head wear like the fur hat or the stocking cap.  However, I started coming in from cold days with a headache when wearing only a hood, so I decided to “sock” the brown hat on my head. Miraculously, the headaches stopped, and as Mother delights in saying when I comment on my cattle-feeding garb, “After all, you’re not going to a fashion show.”

Dad proudly modeling the Siberian hat from
Angie and Ben on Christmas Eve 2001.

Dad wearing his favorite "fur" hat to bottle feed
Little Orphan Andy using a contraption he made
so he didn't have to hold the calf bottle during the
whole feeding.

                The brown stocking cap became a staple of my cattle-tending garb. One can imagine my chagrin after being unable to locate the knit cap, but I headed outside anyway to do the morning chores. To my dismay, near the frost-free hydrant, was my headache-curbing cap in a wet mass enmeshed in wet leaves and grass.

                When reporting the disturbing find to my ever-positive mother, her reply was, “Oh, you know that really nice OU stocking cap that Julia Lemley and her granddaughter, Madison gave Edmund has hardly been worn.”

                The reply that emerged from my mouth was, “Mother, this is Bedlam Weekend. I couldn’t wear that crimson and cream stocking cap with the OSU starter jacket.”

                Mother’s typical unflappable response was, “Well, you would please your Uncle Jim. He’d think you’d finally been converted!”         

                 In my mind, I could hear Dad saying, “It’s all in fun!”

After rereading the post title, I rethought that opinion. In actuality, only during Bedlam matches do the colors clash. Otherwise, Crimson and Cream and the Brightest Orange mix all year long. I have relatives, friends, former colleagues, and former students that eat, sleep, and breath Sooner sports, especially football, and I love them dearly.