them there five-foot tumbleweeds

Today I was crossing a small creek as I was walking back from work and under the bridge was the most gigantic, mindblowing tumbleweed you could ever imagine. I mean, it was so big that it felt like a joke… like someone had hidden it here with a camara to watch how people reacted to it. It reminded me of those British comedy skits where the guy pulls out the four-foot long phone in public and tries to talk on it.

I started laughing as I lifted it up with my shoe to see how big it really was. I swear it was like five feet across. One giant tumbleweed. Well, as I lifted it to see it, the wind caught hold of it and it took off.

I heard it yell “Praise Jesus, I’m healed” as it leapt into the air and sped off ahead of me. It ran toward my home and I was trailing behind it laughing, hoping it wouldn’t hit anyone’s car or dog. And then it stopped. I was afraid we were playing some sort of game of tag and if I passed it, it would catch up with me on another gust of wind and knock me in the head, so I reached out and picked it up to move it off the road. Then I felt really silly walking down the road with a five-foot tumbleweed.

Apparently, I didn’t realize cause I’d never decided to touch one before… but tumbleweeds feel like a cactus, only maybe alittle worse. Because now my hands are full of about a hundred little yellow needles or pricker-like things. And where I dropped him off in the grass, tumbleweed immediately decided to go dance off across the road again anyway. So, all in vain. But atleast I will always be able to say, during those endless stretches of highway in Kansas and you have nothing to talk about except “Whoa, look at that tumbleweed!”… Now I’ll say, “But did you ever see one of them 5 footer ones? No? Well, I have.” And maybe I could make one out of concrete and post signs along a 70 mile stretch of highway telling people to pull off and see the “World’s Largest Tumbleweed!…and a 3-Legged Cow named Sue” (except I’ll say the cow fell and broke a hip and is in a cow treatment facility). And I’d put my attraction right next to the World’s Largest Prairie Dog and feed off it’s business, especially since he’s never open.