freestyle

ester left this link - incredible





The one real regret I have in life is that I never learned to ride.

I was a horse crazy little girl growing up on a farm, and my parents bought me a Welsh pony we named Sunny Boy, because he had a sunny personality.

Sunny had one day of training; I had none. My concept of riding, which Sunny shared, came to be: stay on until Sunny bucks me off. One time Sunny bucked me over his head -- I think I may have turned a half-somersault in the air above him -- then stopped on a dime so as not to step on my face when I landed just inches in front of his hooves.

Our mutual understanding ended in woe when Sunny bucked me off in the pasture one day. I was only 10, and I'd been thrown so many times I had no idea a person could actually get hurt being flung to the ground from the top of a horse. Sunny was bucking, it was time to get off, so I let myself fall to the spot on the ground where I'd been aimed.

I landed on my wrist. It broke in two places, and the injury was severe enough that the doctors thought my arm would grow crooked and would need to be broken again and re-set & pinned a year down the line.

That didn't happen, but I lost my confidence.

A few years ago I took some riding lessons and discovered that I have an absolute, unshakable fear of being thrown, or of simply losing my balance and falling. The other riders at the barn told me that's typical. Once you've fallen you never forget you've fallen.

They also said that everyone who rides horses falls sooner or later. Then they spend months and years trying to get over it.

I don't know whether that's true, but it sounded true to me.

So: regrets.