So my wife likes horses. I am not a fan of them myself. They are big and skittish and untrustworthy and once when we went for a trail ride in the Adirondacks, mine tried to scrape me off on trees, boulders, shrubberies, etc., before finally dropping and rolling around on her back. (I jumped off and thus avoided injury.) Now in that case, the issue was the horse had a saddlesore that the stable hadn’t noticed¹, so it wasn’t entirely² the horse’s fault. But still.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that when my wife and I were in college together and were getting to know each other and chatting about various things, I mentioned how when I was little I would walk to elementary school by cutting through the horse pasture behind our house, and how we were all afraid of this one big scary horse named Thunder who would always come purposefully striding over whenever he saw a human in his field. The assumption of course that he was charing us angry-bull style to pick us up with his giant head and toss us over the fence³.

Fast forward a year or so. We have graduated from college, have gotten married, and are living for a while in the village where I grew up. Naturally, my horse-loving wife would like to meet Thunder, who is still hanging out in the pasture behind our house. Well, why not? What’s the worst that could happen? We get trampled into the ground?

Anyway, we went back to the pasture (bearing gifts this time), and here came Thunder trotting over. Are you ready for a glimpse of the big scary horse? Here he is!

Continue reading “It’s 1991 and everything’s a matter of perspective.” →