Riding a Horse

For years, I have been waging a bitter jihad against horses.  Despite the love I have for almost all other creatures, I just did not want to see horses live.  I thought about purchasing stock in glue, and forsook being a vegan because I kind of enjoyed eating jello with the knowledge that gelatin is made from horse bones.  This hatred, like most hatred, was motivated by fear.

It all started when I was at the creepy church camp my friends and I attended for few summers in middle school and early high school. (I can't tell you whether or not anyone ever touched me inappropriately, because those memories, if they existed, were lost somewhere in the sea of brainwashing, sleep deprivation, and outrageous sugar consumption.)  Anyway, I had never actually ridden a horse before, so when we signed up for a trail ride, I was super excited.  Little did I know, I was about to be traumatized.  (This was one of the events that led to my "defensive pessimism" explained in a previous post.)

We were plodding along through the woods, laughing uproariously every time a horse farted or took a dump on the trail.  About halfway through the ride, my horse spotted something it didn't like.  Possibly a snake, or maybe a turtle, a butterfly, who knows.  That horse sucked.  It reared up and tried to throw me off its back.  I was horrified.  The moment I stepped down from the saddle, I vowed to seek revenge on equines everywhere.

In the past couple years, however, apathy has eroded my resolve and my hatred has winnowed down to a tiny speck.  I have a pretty neutral attitude towards horses these days, mostly because I like to think of them as secret unicorns.  Just because we can't see their horns doesn't mean they don't exist.

So when I'm in Yellowstone riding a horse to the cowboy cookout, it's going to look like this:

But in my head, I'm going to be picturing this: