Against my better judgment, I have enrolled in horse-riding classes.
You do these things when, for one reason or another, you start your life over. Mine was a forced restart and not my idea, but it is working out for the best because after too many years of waiting it is finally allowing me to proceed with my god-given right to a mid-life crisis.
Except that mid-life doesn't seem quite long enough for a crisis. Sports car, trophy broad, two years tops then you flame out and go back to clock punching and couch warming for the rest of your life.
What fun is that?
No, I'm shooting for a mid-to-the-time-that-i-lose-all-my-teeth-life crisis.
Enter Tanner.
Tanner is half thoroughbred, half draft horse. He's bigger than Brando and faster than Joan Collins. He's owned by some breeders in Frederick, Md, who — I mean to say they breed horses, not to imply that ... oh never mind — are teaching me the ropes.
I need the human intervention because Tanner is a nice enough horse but as training goes, he, left to his own devices, would tend to leave out a few steps.
My first time out, Tanner assumed the instruction should go something like this: Lesson 1: Get on the horse. Lesson 2: Go from 0-60 in three seconds flat in a full bore, heels to the sky, hell for leather gallop.
I closed my eyes, grabbed his main like a vice and felt around for the ejector seat. Not that this would have really been necessary, as Tanner was in the process of performing an admirable ejection on his own. Fortunately Tommy, my instructor, stepped in at this moment and reminded the animal that a horse has to walk before it can fly. After that, Tanner strolled along quietly enough, although clearly preoccupied. This worried me a bit, as I thought he might be plotting out some other experiment to try out on the new meat.
But I was afforded enough time to learn to walk and steer. I don't think "steer" is the generally accepted horse word for it, but I was concentrating on too many other things to be working on expanding my vocabulary.
"The key," Tommy said, "is to keep the horse between you and the ground."
I was all for that.
We commenced from walking to trotting and something that is known as "posting." Having four legs, a trotting horse goes up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down. Posting is the means by which the rider partially stands in the saddle two beats, thus eliminating the pounding of two of the up-downs. Ergo, up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down becomes up-down, up-down. If you are a woman, eliminating half of the up-down pounding is important, but if you are a man it is VERY important if you know what I mean.
Our first day's lesson concluded with me not getting it. I had it backward, going up on the downs and down on the ups. This made for roughly eight violent blue jean/leather collisions every 10 seconds.
But I haven't been defeated yet; I signed up for another lesson.
And when as I was leaving, Tommy paid me a compliment. Of all the riders he had ever coached, he said I dismounted with the fastest time on record.