Wild Christmas

The wind whipping through your hair, your face against a horse's mane, a cousin's arms wrapped around your waist.  Leaning backwards, holding on a little tighter, feeling weightless.  Breaking away from the group, gipping the reins a little tighter.

I really dislike horses.  Let's revisit:

The wind whipping through your hair, your face against a horse's mane, a cousin's arms wrapped around your waist.  

Riding on the back of a runaway horse at age ten with my younger cousin.  To make matters worse, we dropped the reins.  The only thing you can do at that point is scream, close your eyes, and hope for a handsome cowboy.  Great fun.

Leaning backwards, holding on a little tighter, feeling weightless.  

Falling off the back of a horse and down a mountain.  Thank you for rearing up, horse.  I love gravel embedded all over my body, as well as my 150 pound father landing on top of me.

  

Breaking away from the group, gipping the reins a little tighter.  

Being assigned the only rotten horse at Girl's Camp.  While the rest of the horsies moseyed along single-file, my horse stayed behind to run through bushes and up the sides of mountains, totally unaware of my agressive rein-pulling.

Three strikes and you are out, my friends.  

Three high school boyfriends and three heartless horses.

Do you see a pattern here?

Needless to say, there is no way I'm getting on any more horses.  (Okay, maybe if there's some kind of catastrophe and I'm fleeing those scary people on Mad Max.)

Horses are beautiful, strong, majestic, and they can kill you.

That's why the following is such a mystery unto myself:

Thanks for a special Christmas treat, Grandpa Steve!