Oh my Moses. I was so excited.
I loved horses growing up. Did riding lessons, had my room packed with figurines, squealed ridiculously like a mouse when My Little Pony Tales came on, the whole bit.
And now it was here.
I was a teenager, and we were going on a TRAIL!
A REAL TRAIL!
WITH TREES!
AND FOREST-ED-NESS!
We were at Turkey Run in Indiana, and there they were, beautiful stallions prancing toward us like they've known us forever and loved us since before that. I watched a few of my fellow youth groupers grab their pony and sling themselves on like pros.
And there she was.
Glorious steed.
Is that sunlight in her mane, or a halo? I chuckled to myself. What a dandy young lady...
Maybe not so young. As she cantered closer, she might've had more years on her then they care to adm---
Oh who cares! Let's get on with it!
I whispered in her ear, telling her we were about to have the best day ever.
Her eyes looked a little glazed and she was making a few weird noises, but I figured she was maybe speaking another language....perhaps she was a foreign horse, imported from the finest Arabian breeds across the Atlantic. That's it.
I swung my legs over and nestled into the saddle. She seemed a bit uneasy at first, but I think she just couldn't handle this massive spiritual connection we had with one another.
Yeah.
The riding began. We all formed a line of horses, marching through the trees as if we were cowboys in the ol' West.
Feels good to be alive.
I could feel what seemed like rumbling. A kind of strange vibrations against my calves. Is she purring? I'm sure she's purring.
That is really a lot of rumbling. Can a horse become pale? She looks pail. She's looking more pale. This horse has gone from grey to white.
I tried to shake it off, pet her neck, talk to her, but then I heard the strangest noise! It sounded like a can of Spaghettios forcing their way through a trumpet while someone played God Bless America.
I looked behind me.
I shouldn't have looked behind me.
Her once lovely tail was now propelling like a military chopper and things I have never wanted to see in all my life were flying out of her rumphole.
"HELP! THE HORSE HAS EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA! NO REALLY I DIDN'T THINK HORSES COULD HAVE IT BUT FOR SURE SHE DOES THOUGH!"
End scene.
That was not my proudest moment. I thought for sure that this day was going to be my finest, one of those golden memories that you always look back on and tell your children about, and instead it is a projectile memory that randomly comes up every time I hear the phrase "loose stool."
Some days don't turn out the way we planned. Some situations don't turned out the way we intended. Our dream job wasn't what we thought it was going to be, our marriage isn't that fairy tale it was supposed to be, and that day you finally had off to relax and enjoy blew up right in your face. What do we do then?
Joel once said to a hurting nation something to the effect of, "Fear not, O land. Be glad and rejoice, for the LORD will do great things." That's what I think of in these instances. Great things can still come of this. It all comes down to perspective.
It's a day I could've cried my eyes out, or laughed my hiney off. I'll let you guess my response. ;)
