Always clean your boots.

Always clean the mud off your boots after an outdoor session. If you don’t, you’ll end up with smeared mascara. This is why.

If you don’t clean your boots, you’ll end up wearing your really cool 5-inch black leather boots instead. Since they look great with a black mock turtleneck and it looks like it’s going to be cold outside today, that’s what you’ll be walking in when your classic car with the broken fuel gauge runs out of gas. Since you’re very careful in calculating your miles, you’ll not have noticed that your boys took the spare gallon of gas out of your trunk to use in the lawnmower. So when you walk those six blocks to the only nearby gas station, you’ll be extra pleased to find that they’re all out of gas cans.

Fortunately the kind gas station attendant has a non-approved container to put the gas in, so you’ll get to walk the six blocks back with lot of well-meaning folk warning you that non-approved containers of gas are dangerous (although for all they know, you could be on your way to sell clean urine for drug tests to the locals, since it’s a nice neighborhood.) It’s OK, because the warnings are drowned out by the cat calls brought on by your ridiculous boots and your sweat-soaked mock turtleneck. When you get to your car and put the gas in, you’ll realize that you lost your keys somewhere along the way. When you do finally get the spare keys, you’ll discover that your car still doesn’t want to start.

At that point, you’ll run through your entire repertoire of expletives while beating on the steering wheel, eventually drawing enough frightened looks from passers-by that you’ll break down into hysterical laughter, running your mascara. You won’t noticed the smeared mascara until the bartender points it out as you pound a double vodka soda some time later.

So, always clean the mud off your boots after a session.

– CJ

I'm betting my grandfather had a spare gallon of gas in the trunk.