Long Ago, in a Land Far Far Away

I’ve been enjoying the responses to Ambermist’s July Challenge, There’s Something About You. I wasn’t going to respond because no matter how much I thought about it I couldn’t think of a thing. I’m pretty boring. My mother came over and she had a big, old, manilla folder full of pictures and clippings, pretty much the detritus of my past.

I started looking through it and found an old newspaper clipping. Azeroth is my passion at the moment and has been for about six years. But I looked at the clipping and remembered my first passion. Horses. From the time I was around eleven to the time I was twenty, they were my whole life. I knew I could not live without them.

In a land far away some track PR person thought a few female races would draw in the crowds. I enrolled in the Escuela de Jinetes. I was even given a nickname by the other jockeys. Roughly translated it’s The Girl with the Straight Ahead Nose. Yeah, not as cool as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but you take what you get.

I enjoyed it, but I’m 5 feet 8 inches tall so my career as a jockey went only as far as those PR races. As much as I starved, those horses were still carrying way over their limit, but I can still remember what it felt like the first time the bell rang and we leapt out of that gate.

I continued to compete on my horses in events where my weight wasn’t an issue. I got dinged up a lot. I was teaching a senior class when my back packed it in and said enough. Those poor people in my class had to try to pry me off the horse I was riding because I couldn’t move. So at the ripe old age of twenty I had to hang up my boots.

So there it is, my first love. And yeah, I don’t put my picture up ANYWHERE on the internet but believe me, lol, no one’s ever going to recognize me from that faded picture of sixteen year old me. I really like this picture. We’re almost at the gate, he’s about to put her in the chute. The bell will ring. AND WE WILL FLY.