The Mighty Matador

This morning I decided to read a chapter out of Otis Spofford to my grandchildren. It was about Otis and a friend dressing up as the bull in a presentation at school. My own children found the chapter hilariously funny, but I'm not sure these little guys fully understood bull fighting and so the story was somewhat lost to them.

I decided to look up some cartoon bull fights and give them an idea of what was going on in the story. We watched Disney's "Ferdinand the Bull" and another video where the matador was none other than Looney Toon's Goofy. (I didn't want anything to grim and gory...) (My husband has reminded me, in the comment section, that Goofy is also a Disney character. Now I am feeling a little goofy myself...) The boys soon had a little idea of what goes on in a bull fight, very little.


Of course, being boys, they decided to have a little bull fight of their own. I tossed Lucas a red dish towel and Simon was transformed into the bull. The bull tired of the game much faster than the matador and soon Lucas was left without a bull to charge him., so I did what any great and wonderful grandma would do. I put my hands down on the floor, pawed at the ground, snorted a time or two, and charged. This produced gales of laughter from the surprised bull fighter.

When my turn at being the bull was over, Simon decided to take another try at it, and for another five or ten minutes, my living room was transformed into a bull ring. Thankfully, there was little cleanup. (It was a very clean fight and there were no bull "leftovers" to pick up after the fight was done.)