I come from a very large, very funny family. There are enough of us that even if three-quarters of us are in a bad mood, there are still three or four sitting in the corner cracking jokes and one liners. I like to think that I can hold my own in the funny wars against anyone in the family

If you ask me what made us so daggone funny, I would say that it had to do with facing life’s adversities, something that seems to hone everyone’s funnybone. It seems to me that cowboys and agricultural people in general get their sense of humor honed to a razor sharp point on the grinding wheel of adversity.

The particular adversity that looms the largest from my childhood was riding horseback in the cold.

Now I am not the first cowboy in the world, nor am I the toughestMore…, nor am I the bravest. These days, I feel a little silly even calling myself a cowboy. I did not spend my childhood riding north into a blizzard. Thousands of cowboys, and probably women, children and vaudeville actors spent more time on a horse in the cold than I ever will. But I rode enough in the cold to know that it is not a pleasant experience.

Riding horseback in the cold presents several challenges which seem more and more daunting the smaller you are. The first is the cold itself which, depending on the time of winter your cows choose to be moved, can be devastating. The rest of the challenges are related to the cold. These include the fact that your horse may not enjoy being ridden in the cold, and the fact that your mobility is limited due to the fact that you are dressed like the Michelin Man.

But the worst, the most excruciating challenge is your feet. Anyone who has ridden in the cold has debated, regretted, cussed, and hated the issue of footwear selection. To keep your feet truly warm in a pair of snowboots, you run the risk of getting hung up in your saddle should you somehow fall off, bundled up as you are. And wearing something that fits in a stirrup guarantees that your foot will freeze, especially your toes, since standing in a stirrup effectively cuts off all circulation to the end of your foot. Add to this the fact that the snowboot technology of even fifteen years ago was somewhat lacking, and you had to just resign yourself to the fact that if you rode in the cold, your feet were going to freeze.

I remember Nick and Al, my brothers, and I riding horseback quite a bit in the cold. My memory may have added a few episodes that do not exist, and before the other nine kids start squawking, they all did their fair share of toe-freezing too. But I remember me and Nick and Al the best. And the longer we rode in the cold, and sometimes the dark, and the less we could feel our toes, the funnier we became. It might have just been our teeth chattering vigorously, but we could not stop laughing it seemed. We were cold, we were tired, we were hungry, sometimes I was scared, and Jerry Seinfeld had nothing on us.

I don’t even remember being cold anymore. I remember riding toward the yard light when we were either done or had given up. I remember being one of the three funniest people in the world. And I remember wishing I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.