THTSL Manual - "Friends"

"Friends"

A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg even if you are half-cracked.    

     ~Author Unknown

In my ongoing ‘The How to Survive Life Manual”, or THTSL manual, there needs to be a special chapter devoted to friendship. There are a million different directions I can go with this, but one friend in particular comes to mind, and whose ongoing exploits (as far as I know) are definitely note-worthy. Her story makes a good ‘part one’ in this chapter.

I’ll call her Cora Jean. She was my height but super thin, which was almost grounds for hating her right on the spot! Worse, she had flaxen hair that looked good even if her head got caught in a tornado: each strand would simply float back in place, flawlessly. And, I always wanted to be a blond! Life sometimes just sucked; in more ways than one, knowing Cora Jean helped to make that true.

I met her practically in my backyard – or, just the other side of my backyard, down in the fields of the horse stable.  She would race her horse around and around, smacking him with a crop and yelling “Heeee.YA! HeeeeeYAAA!” in a voice that would wake the dead.  I took to going down to the stone wall at the back of my yard and just quietly watch her put her horse through his paces. One day, she looked up at me and rode her horse over to the stone wall.

“Hi!” she chirped. “My name’s Cora Jean and this here is Scout,” she cooed, patting the tall brown and white horse affectionately on his neck. Scout’s sad brown eyes looked up at me as if to say, “O, Thank God! I wanted to stop 10 minutes ago!”

“Hi, Cora Jean…I’m Rie,” I countered, “It’s nice to meet you!” With that, we two gals talked for quite some time and then suddenly, my new friend did the unthinkable: She asked me if I’d like to take a ride on Scout!  I quickly explained that I had an artificial hip and artificial knee, but she dismissed that as if I had said I had two mosquito bites.

“Not a problem! People with artificial joints ride horses all the time!” she reassured me, smiling a huge, toothy grin. My mind must have been out to lunch, because I believed her.  And, against my better judgment and using the stone wall as a mounting block, I got up on Scout.

Hey! Not so bad, I remember thinking to myself. Scout and I very slowly made our way across the field to the old, rickety post-and-rail fence, where he promptly put his head down to munch on the grass at his feet.  I could not believe that I was up on top of a horse! I, who over the past several preceding years had spent a great deal of time in a wheelchair and on crutches, healing from one painful surgery after another thanks to Osteonecrosis , was for all the world enjoying riding a horse! It was just unimaginable to me. I pulled gently on the reins to get Scout moving again. His head remained pointed down toward the ground.  Another pull, a slightly firmer tug,  gave me exactly the same results.

“Hmmmm….,” I thought, “he’s not responding to the reins.” There was a reason for that:  the halter had come OFF of his head! There I sat, holding the two reins with the horse’s head piece, called a halter, dangling on the end of it like an old, saggy stretched-out bra!

Now, if you are not into riding horses at all, you will miss the significance of this situation. The reins are the ONLY ‘brakes’ there are when riding a horse! Oh, sure….you can use your body movements and feet to kind of urge him along by kicking him; but to make him stop, which is essential at some point, you need the reins firmly attached to his halter.  I held the free-flowing leather straps in my hand, way out to the side of my body, and tried to signal to Cora Jean, who was way across the field, that “HEY....I HAVE A REAL PROBLEM, HERE!!”

She actually saw me and recognized I was in real bad trouble. All I could do was sit quietly on this horse that I didn’t know from Adam, and pray that he would not spook or decide to take ME on a joy ride, like Mario Andretti racing along at Salt Lake Flats! Cora Jean and her gangly legs trotted as fast as she could across the field and thank God, Scout acted as if he could not have cared less!  She got his reins around his neck and then helped me down off the horse. This was no easy trick! I felt as if I was at least 6 feet up in the air and the ground was a long way down. Still, I was more terrified of being kidnapped by Scout and taken for the ride of my life – which would most likely end it – than I was of the anticipated dismount! With an unceremonious thud, I was at last back on the sweet, kissable ground! I hurt like hell, but I was off of that horse, and that’s all that mattered.

 Cora Jean quickly explained that she didn’t want the halter to have the traditional metal type of snaps that held the halter pieces together. Instead, she wanted a more “natural look” and tied them together by hand herself with little straps of leather. Needless to say, she didn’t tie them tight enough.

Over the next few months, I got to know Cora Jean really well. I discovered that what had happened to me was not so unusual in her world. As the casualties mounted up over that summer, thanks to Cora Jean’s insistence to share her  ‘knowledge’ of horses and horseback riding with others, it became clear that she had not one lick of, pardon the expression, horse sense. Considering that at least three of her other friends or relatives wound up being taken to the ER that year, I got off very easy.  Lord knows, I know she meant well. However, there was another, murkier side to Cora Jean: she was one of those people who really and truly do believe they ‘know it all’ when it comes to a passion in their lives.  And, as far as Cora Jean was concerned, there was not one thing anyone could tell her or teach her about horses.  Those of us who were counted as her ‘friends’ were the ones who paid the price, sad to say.  To the great relief of the horse set in my town, she moved away a few years ago and as far as I know, she is still involved with horses, God bless her new circle of friends!

Ahhh…..friends!  Pick them carefully, and wisely. Avoid a know-it-all like the plague or be prepared to pay the consequences. Do not be afraid to speak your mind to a friend. If he or she refuses to listen – just be on your way.   

Make sure your medical insurance is paid up, at the very least – and if you come out of it all alive,  count yourself lucky!