Yet one more hobby sacrificed to the Gods of Reproduction.
Although I hope to be back teaching after the meatloaves are born, right about the time I had a horse half rear up on me, I realized that maybe this wasn't the safest environment for me and my unborn children. That, and the heat was killing me, which sounds like a lame excuse, but go ahead and thrown on a 30-lb vest, jam your lungs up into your nose, eat so much salt that your feet swell out of the holes in your Keen sandals, and tell me you're not uncomfortable standing in the middle of a ring, dodging out-of-control horses and chasing lazy ponies for hours on end.
I mean...I'm hardcore, but even I have my limits.
So to celebrate (or mourn) this occasion, I thought I'd sum up my top 5 teaching experiences of the past year.
Read on.
You'll laugh.
You'll cry.
You'll probably never trust your children with me (and rightly so).
But most importantly, you'll see why, for better or for worse, my life is so much more boring without this craziness.
1. The Triple Flip
This story can go one of two ways, according to who you ask.
According to the horses, a disgruntled deer jumped out of the woods sporting a Rambo headband and an AK-47 and yelling "This is for eating my grass, motherf*ckers" before letting lose a few rounds into the group lesson where, naturally, the horses were forced to flee for their lives. According to most humans who were there, a baby deer had the misfortune of stumbling out of the tree line and coming face to face with one of our more...sensitive...lesson mares. Regardless of whose story you believe, the reaction was the same: three horses going absolutely bat-shit crazy in the ring simultaneously while children go flying through the air like Asian gymnasts in a Cirque du Soleil performance.
Around the point in time when all three children hit the ground, I was forced to make a decision. Who do I go to first? The child in the mud? The child who hasn't moved since she fell? The child who brought Dunkin Donuts to the lesson and therefore deserves preferential treatment? (These are the touch choices we teachers are forced to make on a near daily basis).
In the end, I'm not sure how I managed to revive three frightened children, retrieve their asshole horses, and resume the lesson with any sense of calm or control, but I must have, because all three of these kids continued to willingly take lessons with me for months thereafter. But we all learned a lesson that day. I learned that there is no way you can 100% control a situation that involves a 1200-lb animal with a Cowardly Lion complex, no matter how experienced you are. They learned to keep their heels down. And the horses?
Well, they didn't learn anything.
Because they're stupid.
2. The "Lisa"
First and foremost, the name of this child has been changed to protect her identity. I'd also like to point out that I believe that each and every one of my students has the potential to be an excellent rider. That said, some require a bit more work to get there than others. There was this student. I'll call her Lisa. Lisa was a beginner who was taught by my awesome best friend who also happens to own the lesson barn at which I teach. My friend had been teaching her for a couple of weeks when she suddenly "turned the reins" (as it were) over to me.
"Why don't you teach Lisa today?" she asked, innocently enough.
And I, naively, agreed.
So I started teaching the lesson and as the minutes ticked by, each slower than the last, I couldn't help but notice that absolutely nothing was getting through to this kid. I told her to pick up the reins and squeeze the horse...and she just sat there. I told her to practice her jump position...and she just sat there. At one point I told her to just drop the reins for a moment so I could demonstrate something...and she just freaking sat there, reins still gripped in her immobile hands like a corpse with rigor mortis.
It was like somebody had taken a sack of potatoes, put a wig on it, put it on a horse, and told me to teach it to ride. Never, in my life, had I seen anything so resistant to instruction as Lisa. I finished the lesson, brought the horse in, and sent Lisa home with a weary smile and all the enthusiasm I could muster. I then turned to my friend...who was smirking and barely able to choke down the laughter that was bubbling up. After a few weeks of staring into Lisa's dead eyes, my friend had had enough and passed her on to me.
She thought it was hysterical.
I thought it was a cruel and unusual form of punishment.
Fortunately, Lisa only came back for a few more lessons before she started to go to seed and had to abandon her dreams of riding to be replanted in the nearest potato field. But from there on out, when my friend or I has had a particularly rough lesson, we remind each other, "hey...at least s/he's not a LISA," at which point we inevitably burst out giggling and return to teach with renewed enthusiasm. And Lisa, wherever you are, be it in someone's hash browns or making little tater tots of your own, I'd like to say thank you for helping me put things in perspective. And for realizing that maybe riding wasn't your forte after all.
3. The Barrel Horse
Imagine, if you will, a petite shetland pony, with an equally petite rider astride him, attempting to mount a giant blue plastic barrel. This was a situation that, I'm sorry to say, I faced more than once in my teaching career at this most recent place of employment. You see....we have this pony. His name is Pip. He's about 3 feet high at the shoulder, cute as a button, and absolutely convinced that his calling in life is in demolition, as opposed to pony rides. Since I've worked at [insert barn name here], I've seen this pony try to ram, climb, stomp, squash, and mount more people and things than a hormone-crazed elephant. Pip's motto is "why go around it, when you can go through it." He's happiest when he's trotting around the ring , one foot caught in a giant plastic cone, dragging a coop that has been conveniently tangled in his tail. So when I put the little tikes on him, I have to be super careful. Because the minute I turn my back to him, he'll be heading for the nearest obstacle, ready to scrape his rider off in an effort to be the first pony to climb a jump standard. It's a bizarre situation to have to be ready for. ESPECIALLY for an animal whose kin would prefer to turn and run rather than risk stepping on their own shadow. So while I'm not citing a specific incident here, I'd say that teaching anyone, on Pip, is an experience unto itself.
Ponies.
Can't live with 'em...can't teach itty bitty kids without 'em.
4. The Wrecking Ball
Okay, so this experience isn't directly related to my students. Well, not my human students. I adopted a horse last year who, when it comes to jumping, gets an A+ for effort...and, like, a D- for performance. While nobody tries harder than my Mikey, nobody would exactly call him a Baryshnikov of the jumping ring. While is heart leaps over every fence, his feet don't always follow suit. In fact, more often, he has two feet in the air, one foot caught over his ear, and one foot dragging through a jump.
Poor baby.
But my friend needed somebody to enter in a jumpers class last summer, because no one but her student was entered, and the class would be scratched if she didn't have a competitor. So in we went. Mikey, trotting hap-hazardly around the ring, looking left and right, utterly pleased with himself and utterly oblivious of the jump we were approaching. Despite my best efforts, Mikey didn't see the 2-foot coop until we were practically on top of it. By then we were two late. So Mikey did what Mikey does best.
He kept trotting.
Straight through the fence.
Leaving a trail of broken wood and pine branches in his wake.
At which I point I believe I yelled something like, "Jesus Christ, Mikey, You have to JUMP" (because I'm an awesome, AWESOME horse trainer).
Fortunately, he figured out how to go over the remainder of the obstacles instead of through them. But I'll always remember the happy-go-lucky look on his face as he plowed through that jump like Lindsey Lohan through the paparazzi.
EPIC (but hysterical) FAIL.
5. The 911 call
I'm not going to say that I sent one of my students to the ER. The horse sent the student to the ER. Or, if you really want to get into specifics...gravity sent the student to the ER. I merely "supervised" the horse and gravitational pull that sent my student flying to her near death (which can closely resemble a broken hip, FYI). But apparently you can't sue animals or phenomena of physics in a court of law, so I was the first one in line for that Blame Express. Anyhoodle...as the story goes, I sent my student to the ER. But it was really a perfect storm of brand-new-slippery-saddle-seat, poor balance, and a fated equine side-step that caused the fall. Perhaps I shouldn't have instructed her to take her feet out of the stirrups. Perhaps I should have kept the horse on a lead rope. Perhaps I should have applied epoxy to the saddle seat before I hoisted her into it on that fated day.
Regardless....she fell. She did a good bit of screaming and crying. I was forced to whip out my cell phone and explain to the 911 operator how I had a student who had busted her ass and was in immediate need of a medical assistance. I then had to stand there, holding her hand as she lay in pain on the ground, and consider the fact that maybe I wasn't fit to be a trainer, because I had just killed my student. In the end, it only ended up in a bruised tailbone for her and a lot of laughs (at my expense) for me.
Oh, and this awesome pic.
Because when it comes to my students, I am nothing if not professional.
But the fall...it wasn't my finest moment. Thank goodness I didn't up and quit right then and there, because I'll tell you...I was severely tempted. But all's well that ends well, and at the end of the day, her parents didn't sue me.
Thank goodness.
There have been other incidents.
Far too many to recount here. Funny incidents and scary incidents and incidents so amazing that I left the barn with a buzz that lasted for days.
That's the thing with horseback riding. We risk significant injury for those moments when everything clicks and - for just a second - you stop being a "human" and a "horse" and become a team.
Sure, it sounds sappy.
Blame the hormones.
But teaching has given me far more satisfaction than any other job I've ever had, and I'm sorry to see it go...even if it's just temporary.
I've said my goodbyes to Pip, Mikey, and the other equines who have stolen my heart, my wallet, and on some occasions, the snack I was holding in my hand.
And I've said my goodbyes to my students, who I grew to love and admire more than I ever thought possible (yes, even Lisa. Sort of.)
And I'll be back, for sure.
But in the meantime?
I'll miss it more than I can even describe.
And for a writer, that's saying something.
I laughed, I cried...oops, now I'd better go friggin PACK!
ReplyDelete