The Same But Different

When you put your foot in your mouth, you've embarrassed yourself (or someone else) with what you say. I don't know what you'd call a foot-in-mouth action--something you do that doesn't require words but still feels the same--but I totally pulled it on Friday.

(Maybe they just call that a "fuck-up." For a journalist, I'm having a crap time with words today. Anyhow.)

Friday afternoon I got out of work, went home and changed clothes, grabbed an apple to eat, plugged my iPod into my car's tape deck (and yeah, I have played tapes on it, and I feel like I'm 8 years old when I do) and headed out for the barn. My parents, after being in North Texas for a few weeks, were going to come out and meet me there and watch me ride as well as see the horses. It was their last chance before work caught up with them, as well as all the mechanics of a move, since they bought a house, and they were looking forward to an easy evening.

I meet them at the barn, where they fawn over the horses, since they haven't seen them in a few years, since we moved them out to Texas before my senior year of college. They fed the guys a bag of carrots, I let them split the apple core I had from the drive, and brought them both in from their paddock to get groomed. I tacked up Topper to take him out for a ride, and went out to the arenas while my parents took the pony out on his lead rope to let him graze outside the arena.

The large covered arena had a sprinkler set up in it that was taking up half the arena, and a full course of jumps meant it was pretty crowded when it came down to dodging obstacles as well as sprays of water. I went into one of the smaller arenas at first, but Topper's afraid of it because it's close to the road and the number of 18-wheelers and jackasses in souped-up pickup trucks is pretty high. We walked around once and the footing was crap, all dug up into trenches for some reason, so we went to the covered arena instead.

Topper takes a long time to warm up, especially now that he's recovering from a third serious injury. We took a good long time walking around, and then did some trotting and kept things light. The arena was pretty cramped--there was another horse out there sharing the fraction of space with us--and he was spooky because of the sprinkler and a bit sore with his front feet. I let him off easy and we're walking around next to the other horse and rider. Her horse is stabled across the aisle from Rio and Topper, and she's a middle-aged working professional, so we get along better than me and the middle school girls. I let Topper's reins out long and take my feet out of the stirrups, and we're just relaxing and talking, and all of the sudden Topper's halfway out from under me and I'm precariously balanced in thin air. I held on for about two seconds, my ass hanging out in the breeze to his left side, and I finally come down with a thump.

Topper, like most horses, wants to get away from a dropped rider. He puts one of his hind feet down directly on my foot and pivots to canter off a few steps away from me. I landed almost immediately behind the other horse, so I'm incredibly grateful he was calm and didn't step on me or kick me in the face. (When I was in middle school I knew a girl who ended up brain damaged by getting kicked in the face, and it's always been one of my rotating horse horrors since.) I bounced up immediately, because it was an easy fall and the adrenaline kicked in, and went over to where Topper had stopped a dozen yards away, his ears back in alarm and his eyes rolling. I calm him down and lead him back to the mounting block and we get back on and finish cooling down.

"I hope that wasn't for our benefit," my mother said when we rode past the section of rail where she was standing.

"Trust me, if I could have avoided it, I would have," I said.

It was pretty humiliating. I know my riding has gotten sloppier since I was younger; I haven't been with a trainer since I was 16 (holy shit, that was a decade ago), and there have been lots of time-outs from riding (like semesters at college, studying abroad, Topper's year-long stints on the disabled list, graduate school in Boston, etc etc). I'm still a good, solid rider, but I don't have the same grace and technical skills I used to. I was already nervous about my parents seeing me ride, and I was thinking I got through it well until the last lap or two around the area, walking and cooling off. Then off I go.

It was like putting my foot in my mouth.

Speaking of the foot, it did swell up and was really tender. Flip flops were ok, and walking wasn't too bad, but any pressure on the top was painful. I got myself drunk at a party on Saturday night, though, so that helped. It was the first time in a long time I'd had any substantial amounts of liquor to drink. Usually I'm a beer and wine person, but this was a Big Gulp Coke and Bacardi (thanks, 7-Eleven!) followed by several strong screwdrivers, a cranberry and vodka, and a dobblebock named Lobotomy Bock. I don't remember what it tasted like, since it was the last thing I had to drink, but the name alone will probably prompt me to buy a six-pack of it in the future.

All in all, embarrassing, but not as bad as some of my verbal foot-in-mouth incidents, like making a joke about death in a cancer treatment facility, my second day on the job as a full-time health reporter. Rock on.