TEAM LAST CALL

To this day, “Surprise!” is still one of my favorite games, right up there with “Pee Your Pants in Front of Your Fourth Grade Class” and “Get a Prostate Exam.”

Here’s how the average game of “Surprise!” went. My mom would begin by hiding at the bottom of the stairs with all of the lights turned out. I would eventually come down the stairs, most likely on my way to do some selfless act like feeding the homeless or raising money for poor, starving orphans. I would round the corner, and my mother would jump out of the shadows, wave her arms around, and scream, “Googley-boogley!” My reaction would be to silently drop to the floor, cover my face with my hands, and somersault across the carpet like a lopsided soccer ball.

Every man likes to think that, when faced with danger, he will react with courage and honor. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered, at an early age, that my natural reaction to danger is to stop, drop, and roll.

After nearly passing out from laughter, my mom, of course, would go scurrying off to tell the rest of the family what had happened. The story of my roly-poly self-defense mechanism has since become one of those embarrassing anecdotes that, like my childhood tendency to pee in trash cans, will simply never go away. I mean, the tendency went away, but the story didn’t.

The vicious cycle continued. My mom kept jumping out of the shadows, I kept rolling around on the ground. My sister was always kind enough to break the news gently to my girlfriends. “Look at it this way,” she said. “If the two of you are walking down the street, and some thugs cross your path and try to set your feet on fire, Jeff will be there to roll around and put out the dangerous flames.”

My reputation as a sissy spread far and wide. Little old ladies started offering me their seat on the bus. Babies started stealing my candy. I got mugged by a gang of Girl Scouts.

But all of that came to an abrupt halt last December when I got my cowboy hat.

My wife and I traveled out to Arizona over Christmas for a week-long visit with her sister’s family, during which time I was left alone for hours on end with my monster-truck-driving, tobacco-chewing, horse-wranglin’ brother-in-law.

We sat around the house, desperately trying to find something in common to talk about. It was just me, a five-foot-nine marshmallow-with-legs, and my brother-in-law, a 300-pound grizzly with a Fu Manchu and a passion for machinery. I spent one entire afternoon reading Salman Rushdie in his garage while he overhauled the engine of his truck.

We decided to spend that evening driving around the desert. (He had to lift me up into the truck.) With the windows down and the ZZ Top cranked up, it was virtually impossible to talk, so that was a relief. I mostly concentrated on picking the bugs out of my teeth and wondering how many potholes we would have to hit before the handgun in the glove compartment went off. Then, without taking his eyes off the road, my brother-in-law reached under his seat, pulled out a ridiculously large cowboy hat, and jammed it down on my head.

I felt something magical happening. I was going through some sort of transformation. I became a new Jeff. Cowboy Jeff. Wranglin’ Jeff. A Jeff who would strike fear into the hearts of men. A swearing, spitting, truck-driving Jeff. A Jeff who would no longer take bullies sitting down. Or rolling around on the floor.

I brought the hat back to Pennsylvania and began wearing it around the house, much to my wife’s horror. I could tell it would be difficult for her to accept the fact that I was no longer the poetry-writing, “Ally McBeal”-watching muffin she married. I even grew a chest hair.

I knew that transforming myself into a true cowboy would take some work.

I can’t even spit without it dribbling down my chin. I have the alcoholic tolerance of a 2-year-old. I can fall down and break my arm just by looking at a horse. I had to practice.

I began by trying to lasso my cats with one of my neckties. They put up quite a fight, but I did eventually manage to catch one. OK, so maybe I used a sheet instead of the necktie. And maybe I didn’t really catch one of my cats as much as I caught my wife when she rounded the corner with a basket of laundry. Surprise!

I thought that maybe, if I tried harder to dress the part, I could coax my inner-cowboy to the forefront of my personality. Accordingly, I went out and got myself a new pair of chaps. While I did feel more manly, I couldn’t help but notice the terrible draft. I had been strolling around the park and strutting my stuff for a good two hours before the nice policeman informed me that yes, you are supposed to wear pants underneath.

It was a small setback for Wranglin’ Jeff. But things were looking up.

People were starting to treat me differently. My wife was completely turned on by my newfound manliness. My friends started dressing like me. My co-workers regarded me with a hushed awe.

My dog, unfortunately, was not as impressed, and decided to eat my cowboy hat.

Yes, the dog, man’s best friend, was the undoing of my manhood. Of course, I was the undoing of his when I took him to be neutered, so I guess we’re even. I came home from work this afternoon to find my hat in tatters on the floor, right beside a mangled shoe, half of a banana, and a shredded box of Girl Scout cookies.

Girl Scouts? Oh, crap.