A slice from my past

When I was in junior high, it was my duty to feed the horses on certain mornings of the week before school. One of the horses was mine, so I did it willingly although I can't say I never complained. I didn't always get out there very early, and every once in a while a problem would come up that would make me late for school. I was always enthused to miss school, and I think I was considering this one of the benefits of having horses and living on a farm. One morning, I found both of our horses wedged into a long narrow aisle of the barn that was supposed to be for people only. My horse, Rocky, was in front, which meant he was most likely the Houdini of that adventure. Unfortunately, that left our schizofrenic horse Tah in back, who was afraid of everything and most likely followed Rocky in there out of fright of being alone.

To get the two horses out, we had two choices; back them out, or lead them through the low doorway at the end of the corridor that was essentially a hole in a wall on the other side, with at least a four foot drop off into the main part of the barn. We decided backing Tah out would be the easiest solution, but unfortunately, it wasn't an easy solution at all. We were city folk with little creative perspective on problems like these, and this 1000-lb horse was pretty well planted in the corridor and did not want to back up under any pursuasion.

After some sweat and tears, we re-evaluated our situation. Neither horse seemed too concerned about the problem, and probably would have stayed there for several days before starting to look around for a way out. We had to decide whether to be late for work and finish dealing with the problem, or leave them there and deal with it when we got home. Being that the barn was a little teetery and the horses had capability for mass destruction when provoked (although they were far from provoked), we decided we may as well take the morning off and figure this thing out entirely. In my enthusiasm for missing school, I leapt off the four foot ledge into the main part of the barn. Rocky, a pony with a mind for adventure, thought that looked like a fantastic idea and followed me, navigating the sharp turn upon landing with ease (has he done this before??). Tah, a little more anxious about things like that, had to think it over a few minutes but clearly was pursuaded by the grace of those before him. Eventually Tah dove through the hole in the wall as well. Moral of the story: never get too excited about the promise of taking the morning off.