Rodeo Birthday Quotes

My father died at the age of 44. Both my grandfathers also passed in their 44th year. Last year, my brother Gerald died at 44. They all died of heart attacks. They all died on their birthday. Tomorrow is my 44th birthday.

One Multicolored strands of lights twinkled from every surface around the dining room of the Big Texan Steak Ranch, even from the antlers of mounted deer heads and the ears of one embarrassed-looking coyote. Only the buffalo head maintained its dignity. Well, he and the giant fiberglass Santa guarding the exit door. I’d wanted to come here ever since my rodeo-cowboy father ran off before my promised seventeenth-birthday dinner, but, in light of the news I’d just received, all of the decorations were suddenly a little too much. I cradled my iPhone between my ear and shoulder, one hand clutching the neck of my poncho and the other slinging my purse straps over my other shoulder. “Come on,” I whispered to Jack, my boss—a man