The Object of my Affection (Piggy Tales Thursday)

Fourth grade rolled around, and with it, the magic number TEN! I remember for my tenth birthday, my uncle gave me a little fake fish in an aquarium. With it, he told me that I now had reached "double digits"! Double digits didn't mean anything to me. Just another day for the kids to tease me. In fourth grade, I had my first unofficial boyfriend. We would sit in the back of the school bus with our fingers laced tightly together. We were two of a kind, both sort of the kids in the outer circle. It was a perfectly innocent love. But soon, as all puppy love does, it dimmed and was replaced by another love. This time, the object of my affection had four legs instead of two. I fell head over heels with a horse. Not any horse in particular, just A HORSE. Any horse would do. Before I could have one of my own, my parents enrolled me in riding lessons. This was to assure that it wasn't one of my hobbies that lasted just 30 seconds a short while. After all, I was just a kid who had no idea what they wanted to do in life! Then again, maybe things haven't changed that much after all... Nevertheless, I began riding lessons with a former teacher who went simply by Alice. She was tough, but a GREAT teacher. She put me astride a giant mare (or maybe she just seemed that way) who was just as wonderful of a teacher as Alice. Together, they taught me the ins and outs of horsemanship. Soon enough, I bought a horse of my own. The prettiest old Appaloosa I could ever have imagined. Her blanket of spots served as my head's pillow many times, and her dirty mane dried my tears more times than I can count. Benjamin Disraeli once said, "A canter is a cure for every evil." How right he is. To this day, a good canter will erase any of my troubles. Now, they are few and far between, but back then without Frosty and her rocking horse canter, those young transition years from child to preteen would've been agony. Oh sure, I fell off. I had more tumbles and spills, bumps and bruises than I can even remember. But like Alice always said, "You aren't a rider until you've fallen off." As is in life, you haven't lived until you've fallen. I stumbled through fourth grade, but every time I heard the shrill whinny of that little gray mare (who to everyone else, wasn't anything special) she picked me back up and gave me the strength to trudge on through life.