It all started...
My adventures in near-survival began just over two years ago, now, when my mother decided that we were moving out to the country to be closer to my school. We bought a house that was twice the size of the one in town, and the most exciting part was that there was a barn and pastures on the property. I am passionate about horses, I know the common and scientific names for pretty much any bone, muscle or nerve on a horse's body, I love getting the flighty and sensitive horses to accomplish things no one ever thought they could. Lots of people have told me that I'm pretty good with horses, but I always see myself improving and never seemingly reaching my goals.
My sister and I dove into the search for horses earnestly. I emailed people furiously about their horses, how old, how tall, what's their personality, are they being worked under saddle? The questions went on seemingly for days. I finally narrowed it down to two horses, but one lived in Wisconsin, over 600 miles away by land, so I decided on the other horse. My mother wasn't aware of this final decision, and went ahead and bought the first horse as a present for me. I was excited despite the distance, and then turned my attention to the matter of finding a horse for my sister.
She was very timid around horses, having not ridden that much and finding their large size terrifying, she'd never advanced very far, so I was looking for a calm, older, over-trained horse. She was looking for beauty, personality, and spunk, all things that one reads about in the books. Her logic behind this desire was that she would bond with the horse instantly and they'd become inseparable and all her problems with horses would be solved.
We were on the internet, lazily searching for a new prospect, when we saw a horse named "Jade". It was an interesting name, so I clicked on the ad and read the description. It said something along the lines of: --This seller hasn't yet described this horse! E-mail the seller with questions.-- That's all it said, so I moved on and didn't think about the horse again. That was an unfortunate move, as it turned out, because my sister went to my mother and again, without conferring with me, we bought the mare. We hadn't emailed the owner, we hadn't even see a picture of her, but we had just bought her.
Three weeks later Jade was unloaded, all fire and spunk but more than a little homely. The owner had done a beautiful job braiding Jade's mane, carefully grooming her to a sheen and generally making her practically show ready, but the mare's trojan nose, narrow shoulders, exceedingly bright eyes, flared ears, clean legs and clever look spelled trouble to me. The mare was jogging in place, head held high in the air, nostrils flaring, and my sister loved her. She began petting her and breathing soft words of sweetness to Jade. The moment was sweetness was quickly ruined as the mares ears became pinned, her head dropped and she snapped at my sister. The poor girl jumped away and began to cower behind me as the mare tried to establish dominance over me. I stood my ground and the mare backed down, but I could tell already that it was going to be a challenge, learning to handle this horse.
The next day, I left my sister and Jade to themselves as I went off to visit an aunt in Boston, calling regularly to check on the mare. Two weeks later, when I finally returned home after my trip, I announced to the peanut gallery that we were going to see how trained the horse was. I caught her with plenty of bribes, fought to get her into the barn, tied her to the wall, and sat down to wipe the sweat off my forehead. At that point, I thought that this horse must never have been ridden. I then untied her to start sacking her out, getting her accustomed to the idea of tack, the basics of trying to start her.
A week or two later, the mare didn't panic anymore when I brought her inside to take care of her and I could effectively get all the tack on her. The woman who had owned her before me said that she'd been ridden before, so I hopped up on her in the middle of the pasture, bracing myself for any reaction. There was no reaction. Ms. I'm - so - clever - that - you - can't - keep - me - in - the - pasture was all of a sudden standing in one spot with her head hanging low and a disinterested expression in her eye. I was very suspicious of said complacency. I nudged her forward with a click and her hind leg swept up from under her belly to kick at my feet. After some persuasion, I got her to walk forward, but she would often grab the bit and gallop back to the barn door. So we walked. We walked long miles within the pasture, following the fence because if we deviated from the set path she'd gallop back to the door again. For whatever reason, I never succeeded with the hours and hours of groundwork that I struggled to get her to accomplish.
There were many adventures following with the mare--for example: the time that she escaped out from underneath me (I have no idea how she did it. I can ride anything you hand me but this mare can walk right out from under me) and ran off down the road due to uncontrollable curiosity. It was quite the caravan of people, the mare with a flashy saddle pad and a mischievous air to her trot, me jogging just out of reach, trying to catch the damn horse, my step-dad following me on a four-wheeler, a few curious neighbors and a police man with his lights on trying to keep us all from getting hit. I haven't since had such an event--but after Jade and I found some compromises, we got along well enough. The rule now is that I don't make her do ring work, keep her on a tight rein, ask her to jump when she doesn't want to, put strangers on her without her permission, keep her in the pasture for too long without going out for a ride, keep the trail rides monotonous or put a western saddle on her and she behaves like the sweetest horse. She has a beautiful long strided trot, the nicest rocking chair canter, and an "I can and will conquer anything" attitude when we're out on the trails. In terms of a trail horse or a beginning rider horse, she's amazing. In terms of getting her to behave like a horse instead of a slightly spoiled human, she's the most difficult mule. Since I've come to the conclusion that she's either a mustang-arabian cross or a mountain goat-llama-cat-bitch cross, I think that at some point I should hire someone to hunt down whoever bred her and tie them to a tree and demand of them what they were thinking. Jade's good company though, and a most adventurous partner in whatever we're attempting to accomplish.
Unfortunately, she's never decided to end her difficulties with me, and she's not even the end of my horse problems. About a year ago my father and I decided that a good summer job would be retraining a horse. We started our search with gusto, called countless people with 'green' or 'unstarted' horses, but though I found several horses that I thought were perfect, none managed to fit in with my father's ideals. I did try to be a little more thorough in my search this time though, because ending up with two horses, both sight-unseen was more nerve wracking than it needed to be. One day I got home from finals and the phone rang so I answered it and it was my father. The conversation started out normally, but then he asks, "So, guess where I am right now?"
"Uhm... home?" It was Saturday, that's a decent guess, I suppose.
"Coming home, yes. What am I pulling behind this car?"
My stomach drops in excitement. "A horse trailer?!"
"Yup. And what do you think is in the trailer?"
"Oh my god! We got him?!" I was referring to the horse that I had set my hopes on; the only reason we hadn't bought him yet was that the owner wanted to allow some other guy to have a chance first.
"No, not the guy you wanted, but we did buy a real nice guy."
I spent a moment thinking about the other geldings we were looking at, there weren't any that were real options, most of the choices were mares. I was intrigued. "Oh really?"
"His name's Majestic Country, he's been off the track for about three and a half months, and he's a really beautiful horse. He's got some rain rot and he's about 200 pounds underweight, but nothing that we can't fix."
For anyone who doesn't know what rain rot is, count yourself among the lucky. Rain rot is a fungal disease that grows underneath the skin and causes intense itching, pain, and eventually if it gets large enough, will cause huge swaths of skin to peel off.
"That's great! I can't wait to meet him!" We ended the conversation, and I thought about all the ex-race horses I've ever met. They were all high strung, difficult to handle, had a tendency to bolt, and were scared of almost everything that looked at them funny. I shook these thoughts out of my head and went on with life, finished school for the year and sat in the car excitedly for all five hours that it took to get to my dad's house. By the time we got there it was dark, but my step-mom took me out to the round-pen to meet the horse that we'd nicknamed Jasper. His previous nickname had been Jester, but then my sister bought a ferret and named it Chester, so we changed Jester to Jasper for the sake of clarity.
The night was really foggy, so we could barely see more than five or six feet out in front of us, but when we got to the round-pen, Jasper came forth from the fog as if he were a dream. His neck was arched as finely as if he were an arabian stallion and his dark colors made him seem almost ghostly in the fog. I reached out to let him smell my nose and he screamed a stallions clarion, plunged away from me and went galloping around the edge of the ring. I looked over to Sandi and she shrugged, telling me that it was an incredibly auspicious meeting. I spent fifteen minutes or so trying to calm the horse down, but never got him calm enough to really look him over. I then retired for the night, telling myself that I would try again in the morning.
The morning came and I went out to visit Jasper. The poor state he was in stopped me in my tracks, because he was all skin and bones. I could see every rib in painstaking detail, and the rain rot had pulled all the fur off his back, his hind quarters and most of his legs. It almost brought me to tears, the way this horse had been treated, and I was so glad that he was ours, because no matter what happened we would take better care of him than his previous owners.
He was much easier to catch in the morning, and he was calm as I brought him up to the barn and groomed him very very gently. Because of how skinny he was, I didn't want to tack him or even attempt to ride him today, but my parents said that as long as we padded him up well it wouldn't be a problem. So I hesitantly set the saddle pad on his back and he tensed up all over, every muscle quivering. I pet him softly, murmured to him, tried to get his attention away from the saddle pad but he refused to calm down. I set the saddle on his back with the encouragement of my father and Sandi, and tightened the girth. By the time I was done just getting the saddle on Jasper was dripping sweat, his eyes were rolling and he was trembling all over but he hadn't moved an inch, so my parents gestured for me to put the bridle on and just see how he was with a person on him. They both swore up and down that he hadn't been like this the first time they saw them, and I started muttering to myself about all the drugs that the horse could have been on. I removed his halter and swung the reins over his head to start putting the bridle on and he started backing up until his hindquarters were square against the back fence and I adeptly slipped the bridle on while he was distracted. He immediately calmed down and I breathed a sigh of relief. I led him into the middle of the pen, put my helmet on and looked to my parents. They nodded and I took a deep breath, turned around, put my foot in the stirrup and swung myself on before I had any time to rethink the situation.
Jasper, however, had plenty of time to think over the situation and he decided to be a western hero and reared up as tall as he could with his hooves lancing the sky and his fairly intimidated rider clinging like a burr to his back. When all four hooves were back on the ground I urged him into a canter before he he could try to rear again and we were off. His head tucked in a little and his hindquarters came up underneath him and he began to feel relaxed and calm, as long as we were moving out and forward.
Throughout the summer, fall, winter and early spring, I tried countless methods to try to get him to calm down, but the only one that I found that worked reliably every time was when I operated under the principle "one man to one horse". The theory is that a high strung horse can understand one man asking one thing of him, not half a dozen people running about trying to tell him what to do. Everytime I altered this rule, things began to go badly.
There was one time that I was riding him without a saddle because he's always calmer without tack, and my step-mom Sandi came out to help me control him because he was dancing about 'inappropriately', and the moment she reached her hand out to hold him, he exploded. He bucked and reared and galloped about clumsily, and all the while the only thing I could do was whisper to him.
The next day when I went out to ride Jasper, he was very suspicious of what I wanted to do with him. He was nervous about the trees and the grass, so when I asked him to walk between two trees he froze. He twitched in indesicion, and I could feel that he was about to turn and bolt, so I grabbed some mane and held on while he spun and shot out towards the pasture. Jasper usually bolts straight, which means that he doesn't buck or swerve when he bolts, so I was busy paying attention to not having him slide out from under me as he bolted, so when he bucked, I was gone. I hit the ground awkwardly, rolled and felt as if every bone on my right side of my body had been shattered. My dad came running around the corner for me, but I couldn't move or talk in order to tell him that I'd be okay. I was angry, more than hurt, angry that I hadn't been able to keep Jasper from bolting. Jasper sensed my anger when he came trotting back to see if I was okay (horses really do have a tremendous sense of compassion, when it comes to humans, they just have stronger instinctual reactions than compassionate reactions) so he galloped away again, tail held high and nostrils flaring. When my dad got me to stand up, I couldn't put any weight on my right leg at all because my hip hurt so badly. Once he saw that I was standing my dad jogged off to catch Jasper, leaving me to limp back to the house on my own. I got into the house and collapsed on the couch, not to move again for another 12 hours.
I walked like a pirate for about a week, but slowly recovered a normal walk. I still can feel my hip complaining sometimes, but it serves to remind me about how I asked too much of Jasper and then paid for it.
About four months before this event with Jasper, I was undergoing a change of my own. For the first time in my life, I'd made a real friend, one that had me over to her house every night that she wasn't at mine, one that I went to see movies with, one that glanced at me across the hall and winked and it was a conversation all on it's own. Her name was Wendy, and she was the greatest, in my opinion. We spent a lot of time hanging out with a boy named Ryan, who shared a pretty similar opinion of Wendy with me, but he had the added destructive bonus of being totally in love with her.
My opinion of Ryan was a somewhat flucuating deal, sometimes I was in love and sometimes he was just a good friend but whenever the topic of opinion comes up, I am reminded of my first real interation with Ryan. He came over to Wendy's house to pick us up so we could hang out for the evening, and we both got in his pick up truck. We were driving down the road, totally normal, when I asked where we were going. Both he and Wendy gave me an evil eye and then the truck swerved off the road and all of a sudden, we're getting lost in the woods on a track that I didn't even know existed.
My sister and I dove into the search for horses earnestly. I emailed people furiously about their horses, how old, how tall, what's their personality, are they being worked under saddle? The questions went on seemingly for days. I finally narrowed it down to two horses, but one lived in Wisconsin, over 600 miles away by land, so I decided on the other horse. My mother wasn't aware of this final decision, and went ahead and bought the first horse as a present for me. I was excited despite the distance, and then turned my attention to the matter of finding a horse for my sister.
She was very timid around horses, having not ridden that much and finding their large size terrifying, she'd never advanced very far, so I was looking for a calm, older, over-trained horse. She was looking for beauty, personality, and spunk, all things that one reads about in the books. Her logic behind this desire was that she would bond with the horse instantly and they'd become inseparable and all her problems with horses would be solved.
We were on the internet, lazily searching for a new prospect, when we saw a horse named "Jade". It was an interesting name, so I clicked on the ad and read the description. It said something along the lines of: --This seller hasn't yet described this horse! E-mail the seller with questions.-- That's all it said, so I moved on and didn't think about the horse again. That was an unfortunate move, as it turned out, because my sister went to my mother and again, without conferring with me, we bought the mare. We hadn't emailed the owner, we hadn't even see a picture of her, but we had just bought her.
Three weeks later Jade was unloaded, all fire and spunk but more than a little homely. The owner had done a beautiful job braiding Jade's mane, carefully grooming her to a sheen and generally making her practically show ready, but the mare's trojan nose, narrow shoulders, exceedingly bright eyes, flared ears, clean legs and clever look spelled trouble to me. The mare was jogging in place, head held high in the air, nostrils flaring, and my sister loved her. She began petting her and breathing soft words of sweetness to Jade. The moment was sweetness was quickly ruined as the mares ears became pinned, her head dropped and she snapped at my sister. The poor girl jumped away and began to cower behind me as the mare tried to establish dominance over me. I stood my ground and the mare backed down, but I could tell already that it was going to be a challenge, learning to handle this horse.
The next day, I left my sister and Jade to themselves as I went off to visit an aunt in Boston, calling regularly to check on the mare. Two weeks later, when I finally returned home after my trip, I announced to the peanut gallery that we were going to see how trained the horse was. I caught her with plenty of bribes, fought to get her into the barn, tied her to the wall, and sat down to wipe the sweat off my forehead. At that point, I thought that this horse must never have been ridden. I then untied her to start sacking her out, getting her accustomed to the idea of tack, the basics of trying to start her.
A week or two later, the mare didn't panic anymore when I brought her inside to take care of her and I could effectively get all the tack on her. The woman who had owned her before me said that she'd been ridden before, so I hopped up on her in the middle of the pasture, bracing myself for any reaction. There was no reaction. Ms. I'm - so - clever - that - you - can't - keep - me - in - the - pasture was all of a sudden standing in one spot with her head hanging low and a disinterested expression in her eye. I was very suspicious of said complacency. I nudged her forward with a click and her hind leg swept up from under her belly to kick at my feet. After some persuasion, I got her to walk forward, but she would often grab the bit and gallop back to the barn door. So we walked. We walked long miles within the pasture, following the fence because if we deviated from the set path she'd gallop back to the door again. For whatever reason, I never succeeded with the hours and hours of groundwork that I struggled to get her to accomplish.
There were many adventures following with the mare--for example: the time that she escaped out from underneath me (I have no idea how she did it. I can ride anything you hand me but this mare can walk right out from under me) and ran off down the road due to uncontrollable curiosity. It was quite the caravan of people, the mare with a flashy saddle pad and a mischievous air to her trot, me jogging just out of reach, trying to catch the damn horse, my step-dad following me on a four-wheeler, a few curious neighbors and a police man with his lights on trying to keep us all from getting hit. I haven't since had such an event--but after Jade and I found some compromises, we got along well enough. The rule now is that I don't make her do ring work, keep her on a tight rein, ask her to jump when she doesn't want to, put strangers on her without her permission, keep her in the pasture for too long without going out for a ride, keep the trail rides monotonous or put a western saddle on her and she behaves like the sweetest horse. She has a beautiful long strided trot, the nicest rocking chair canter, and an "I can and will conquer anything" attitude when we're out on the trails. In terms of a trail horse or a beginning rider horse, she's amazing. In terms of getting her to behave like a horse instead of a slightly spoiled human, she's the most difficult mule. Since I've come to the conclusion that she's either a mustang-arabian cross or a mountain goat-llama-cat-bitch cross, I think that at some point I should hire someone to hunt down whoever bred her and tie them to a tree and demand of them what they were thinking. Jade's good company though, and a most adventurous partner in whatever we're attempting to accomplish.
Unfortunately, she's never decided to end her difficulties with me, and she's not even the end of my horse problems. About a year ago my father and I decided that a good summer job would be retraining a horse. We started our search with gusto, called countless people with 'green' or 'unstarted' horses, but though I found several horses that I thought were perfect, none managed to fit in with my father's ideals. I did try to be a little more thorough in my search this time though, because ending up with two horses, both sight-unseen was more nerve wracking than it needed to be. One day I got home from finals and the phone rang so I answered it and it was my father. The conversation started out normally, but then he asks, "So, guess where I am right now?"
"Uhm... home?" It was Saturday, that's a decent guess, I suppose.
"Coming home, yes. What am I pulling behind this car?"
My stomach drops in excitement. "A horse trailer?!"
"Yup. And what do you think is in the trailer?"
"Oh my god! We got him?!" I was referring to the horse that I had set my hopes on; the only reason we hadn't bought him yet was that the owner wanted to allow some other guy to have a chance first.
"No, not the guy you wanted, but we did buy a real nice guy."
I spent a moment thinking about the other geldings we were looking at, there weren't any that were real options, most of the choices were mares. I was intrigued. "Oh really?"
"His name's Majestic Country, he's been off the track for about three and a half months, and he's a really beautiful horse. He's got some rain rot and he's about 200 pounds underweight, but nothing that we can't fix."
For anyone who doesn't know what rain rot is, count yourself among the lucky. Rain rot is a fungal disease that grows underneath the skin and causes intense itching, pain, and eventually if it gets large enough, will cause huge swaths of skin to peel off.
"That's great! I can't wait to meet him!" We ended the conversation, and I thought about all the ex-race horses I've ever met. They were all high strung, difficult to handle, had a tendency to bolt, and were scared of almost everything that looked at them funny. I shook these thoughts out of my head and went on with life, finished school for the year and sat in the car excitedly for all five hours that it took to get to my dad's house. By the time we got there it was dark, but my step-mom took me out to the round-pen to meet the horse that we'd nicknamed Jasper. His previous nickname had been Jester, but then my sister bought a ferret and named it Chester, so we changed Jester to Jasper for the sake of clarity.
The night was really foggy, so we could barely see more than five or six feet out in front of us, but when we got to the round-pen, Jasper came forth from the fog as if he were a dream. His neck was arched as finely as if he were an arabian stallion and his dark colors made him seem almost ghostly in the fog. I reached out to let him smell my nose and he screamed a stallions clarion, plunged away from me and went galloping around the edge of the ring. I looked over to Sandi and she shrugged, telling me that it was an incredibly auspicious meeting. I spent fifteen minutes or so trying to calm the horse down, but never got him calm enough to really look him over. I then retired for the night, telling myself that I would try again in the morning.
The morning came and I went out to visit Jasper. The poor state he was in stopped me in my tracks, because he was all skin and bones. I could see every rib in painstaking detail, and the rain rot had pulled all the fur off his back, his hind quarters and most of his legs. It almost brought me to tears, the way this horse had been treated, and I was so glad that he was ours, because no matter what happened we would take better care of him than his previous owners.
He was much easier to catch in the morning, and he was calm as I brought him up to the barn and groomed him very very gently. Because of how skinny he was, I didn't want to tack him or even attempt to ride him today, but my parents said that as long as we padded him up well it wouldn't be a problem. So I hesitantly set the saddle pad on his back and he tensed up all over, every muscle quivering. I pet him softly, murmured to him, tried to get his attention away from the saddle pad but he refused to calm down. I set the saddle on his back with the encouragement of my father and Sandi, and tightened the girth. By the time I was done just getting the saddle on Jasper was dripping sweat, his eyes were rolling and he was trembling all over but he hadn't moved an inch, so my parents gestured for me to put the bridle on and just see how he was with a person on him. They both swore up and down that he hadn't been like this the first time they saw them, and I started muttering to myself about all the drugs that the horse could have been on. I removed his halter and swung the reins over his head to start putting the bridle on and he started backing up until his hindquarters were square against the back fence and I adeptly slipped the bridle on while he was distracted. He immediately calmed down and I breathed a sigh of relief. I led him into the middle of the pen, put my helmet on and looked to my parents. They nodded and I took a deep breath, turned around, put my foot in the stirrup and swung myself on before I had any time to rethink the situation.
Jasper, however, had plenty of time to think over the situation and he decided to be a western hero and reared up as tall as he could with his hooves lancing the sky and his fairly intimidated rider clinging like a burr to his back. When all four hooves were back on the ground I urged him into a canter before he he could try to rear again and we were off. His head tucked in a little and his hindquarters came up underneath him and he began to feel relaxed and calm, as long as we were moving out and forward.
Throughout the summer, fall, winter and early spring, I tried countless methods to try to get him to calm down, but the only one that I found that worked reliably every time was when I operated under the principle "one man to one horse". The theory is that a high strung horse can understand one man asking one thing of him, not half a dozen people running about trying to tell him what to do. Everytime I altered this rule, things began to go badly.
There was one time that I was riding him without a saddle because he's always calmer without tack, and my step-mom Sandi came out to help me control him because he was dancing about 'inappropriately', and the moment she reached her hand out to hold him, he exploded. He bucked and reared and galloped about clumsily, and all the while the only thing I could do was whisper to him.
The next day when I went out to ride Jasper, he was very suspicious of what I wanted to do with him. He was nervous about the trees and the grass, so when I asked him to walk between two trees he froze. He twitched in indesicion, and I could feel that he was about to turn and bolt, so I grabbed some mane and held on while he spun and shot out towards the pasture. Jasper usually bolts straight, which means that he doesn't buck or swerve when he bolts, so I was busy paying attention to not having him slide out from under me as he bolted, so when he bucked, I was gone. I hit the ground awkwardly, rolled and felt as if every bone on my right side of my body had been shattered. My dad came running around the corner for me, but I couldn't move or talk in order to tell him that I'd be okay. I was angry, more than hurt, angry that I hadn't been able to keep Jasper from bolting. Jasper sensed my anger when he came trotting back to see if I was okay (horses really do have a tremendous sense of compassion, when it comes to humans, they just have stronger instinctual reactions than compassionate reactions) so he galloped away again, tail held high and nostrils flaring. When my dad got me to stand up, I couldn't put any weight on my right leg at all because my hip hurt so badly. Once he saw that I was standing my dad jogged off to catch Jasper, leaving me to limp back to the house on my own. I got into the house and collapsed on the couch, not to move again for another 12 hours.
I walked like a pirate for about a week, but slowly recovered a normal walk. I still can feel my hip complaining sometimes, but it serves to remind me about how I asked too much of Jasper and then paid for it.
About four months before this event with Jasper, I was undergoing a change of my own. For the first time in my life, I'd made a real friend, one that had me over to her house every night that she wasn't at mine, one that I went to see movies with, one that glanced at me across the hall and winked and it was a conversation all on it's own. Her name was Wendy, and she was the greatest, in my opinion. We spent a lot of time hanging out with a boy named Ryan, who shared a pretty similar opinion of Wendy with me, but he had the added destructive bonus of being totally in love with her.
My opinion of Ryan was a somewhat flucuating deal, sometimes I was in love and sometimes he was just a good friend but whenever the topic of opinion comes up, I am reminded of my first real interation with Ryan. He came over to Wendy's house to pick us up so we could hang out for the evening, and we both got in his pick up truck. We were driving down the road, totally normal, when I asked where we were going. Both he and Wendy gave me an evil eye and then the truck swerved off the road and all of a sudden, we're getting lost in the woods on a track that I didn't even know existed.
@@I'm really sorry. I lost motivation to finish this section right now, but I'll finish it at some point. This probably means that the next few sections'll have to be heavily edited as well, but that's okay. My apologies.@@
After the second day
I started work yesterday, my first day as if it were a 'real' job. In many ways, it is my first real job, the sort where I punch in and actually get paid, but I've worked before. I've worked at horse barns, trading gallons of sweat for a few minutes on a horse being yelled at to produce more sweat. I've baby-sat screaming kids and quiet kids, and I've cleaned people's houses and walked their dogs, but in terms of 'put-in-on-your-resume' type jobs, I suppose this is the first.
So, it ended up that less than five days after I was released from school for the summer, I returned to work in the kitchen--see the other side of the system--and wash dishes, tour prospective students, and try not to ask too many questions of the few remaining teachers on campus, all under the orders of Jim, the head chef. He's forty-six or fifty-one, I never can tell, has a five year old son and a beautiful wife. He also has the funniest sense of humor, and it mostly revolves around giving you a funny expression and telling you that you didn't do something correctly.
But yes, I said campus. The school is an elitist boarding school that deals primarily with kids with issues, drugs, ADD, AD/HD... things I wasn't aware even existed before I ended up at this school after being rejected from an even more prestigious and elitist school. Mind you, I'm a day student, and day students don't suffer from the snooty, uppish and 'distinguished' attitude that so many boarding students suffer.
At any rate, it's summer, so all of these kids aren't around right now. Instead we have summer groups coming through, staying in the dormitories and enjoying the school's beautiful campus. Yesterday I met this group of kids, about eight to ten years old, and they were the most frank adorable kids. There is a window through which people stack their dishes, and I am on the other side of the window washing them. One kid comes up to the window and hands me his plate and silverware and then stands very still, watching me. I've done a lot of baby-sitting, I know how eight to ten year olds can behave, and standing this deathly still is not one of their usual activities. I came back over to the window and asked him, "Excuse me, is there anything wrong?"
No response.
I waited for a moment, then returned to my work, because there were a lot of dishes and I didn't want to be caught standing around without doing work. Finally, the boy shrugged his hoodie off of his head to reveal a shock of red hair and fixed me with his vivid blue eyes and said, "I vomited last night."
Excuse me? So I said what any self-righteous person would say when caught off guard and said,
"What?"
"I vomited last night."
"I'm sorry, I hope you're feeling better this morning."
"My shoes are untied."
"Do you want me to tie them for you?" I asked, unsure how to respond.
"No, that's okay. I can tie them."
The boy nodded somberly and stood there for a few more moments before wandering off to wreak havoc his friends, I'm sure of it.
I was finally catching up on the dishes when one of the counselors leans his head in my window and says, "We're all from Indiana, and I just wanted to tell you that I think it's amazing that Lake Michigan comes this far north. I had no idea the lake was so big, and thanks for doing the dishes for us."
Yes, Lake Michigan extends all the way to northern Michigan. It's called a great lake, the third largest freshwater body in the world, outstripped only by haughty Lake Superior and little-mentioned Lake Baikal. I nodded and smiled, then shook my head curiously, wondering how many people really were that ignorant. I then had to closely curb myself, because those snooty tendencies are what get people into trouble, so I returned to scrubbing the bacon pan.
Shortly after this incident, a girl comes up to me, unconsciously pushing long brown hair out of her freckled face and hands me a fork. Instead of setting the fork down or letting me take it from her when I reached out to handle it, she held on to the fork and met my eyes with an intensity that can only be summoned by kids of that age. "Take good care of Jimmy." Her tenuous command had me puzzled for a moment, but then she followed it up with, "And do not put him in that machine. It's scary. Wash Jimmy by hand." She then watched as I followed her command, amused with my situation.
This same girl came back with a mug and informed me that Susie was not afraid of the dishwasher and that the mug greatly enjoyed it's hot chocolate. I smiled and asked the girl's name, but she was already moving off to rejoin her friends.
Seven and a half hours later, I was released from the kitchen with the assurance that next week Jim'll be back and you won't be cooped up in the corner quite so much. I left the room and was quickly caught by the admissions officer Megan, a western gun-shooting girl with a quiet demeanor who is well suited to the title 'officer' because of how people pay attention to her. She can quiet the entire cafeteria by saying, almost in an undertone, "Excuse me." She's also rather didactic, which is useful in dealing with some of the people who come through her office.
At any rate, Megan snatched me--practically mid-step--and asked me to tour a girl through the school. I agreed, glanced at the clock and hoped that my habitually late mother would be reliable today.
Megan introduced me to Abby politely, and shepherded us off in the direction of the dorms, the gym and the art building. I made light conversation, telling her what classes I thought were the best, how the typical schedule worked, and finally asked what she thought of the school.
"Oh... it's really nice... the only problem I see is that there are no boys."
"The school is made up of about two-thirds boys during the school year."
"No, no, no, that's not what I mean. I mean that they're separated at night."
Yes, they are. No more needs to be said about this girl, but she was very funny and a polite enough person.
My mom found me and told me that she'd been waiting for a half hour, I apologized, she said it was okay, and we got headed back towards home. On our way back, she decided to stop by Krystall's house. Krystall is Mom's best friend and also happens to be Ryan's mother, she's a heavy smoker with red hair and tired eyes, and she also is the sweetest most dedicated mother.
She has two sons, not only Ryan but Josh too. Josh comes in at sixteen years old and a bad case of AD/HD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder). It can make dealing with him difficult, especially when trying to get someone who is very hyper and easily distracted to concentrate.
We spent the rest of the day at Krystall's, and when we finally went home I'd been introduced to many new subjects, these including: monster truck rallys, dirtbike freestyle contests and cake decorating contests. My sister and I laughed about it all the way home.
The next morning I woke up early to get ready to go to work. I felt sore and dragging, but I managed to get myself ready and got to work because I thought that if I started moving some, the soreness would wear off. I was right, but unfortunately I started to feel sick right about the time that I was making a cheese plate. The smell of the cheese, the way the lights were, everything about the room made me hurt or nauseous, so I gave up and told Deb that I needed to leave early. She waved me out, telling me that if I made any of her kids get ill from handling her food, I'd get a beating. I gave her a half-hearted smile and left, wandering over the to main academic building to see if I could give someone a call for a ride home.
I eventually got a ride home because Krystall was willing to come get me, but we stopped at her house so she could grab something. I walked inside to wait for her and sat on a couch, and when she came back out of her room I was soundly asleep. She just shook her head and let me sleep.
A few hours later, I woke up to Ryan holding me against his chest and talking quietly to his mom. When he realized that I was awake, he gave me a quick kiss and said that he wasn't going to be there for long.
"That's okay. You going to your second job now?"
"Mmhm. I'm sorry that I can't stay here and take care of you."
I smiled wryly. "I don't need much taking care of. I've been asleep all day."
"Alright, then I'm sorry I can't stay here and hold you while you sleep."
"You're too sweet."
"It's true. Now be quiet and go back to sleep." He squeezed me tight and then I fell asleep in fairly short order.
The next time I awoke was to my mother, pounding at the door. She came in and looked around for me then barked, "Kate, we need to go now."
"Huh? Oh umm..." I rubbed my eyes as I sat up and tried not to swoon as a wave of nausea swept through my body at the sudden movement.
"Get up. We need to go now."
Okay. I got up and went, thanking Krystall for taking care of me.
Later, when talking to my father on the phone, my description involved a lot of "And then I fell asleep. And then I slept some more."
My father's response? "You know, that kinda scares the hell out of me, because your mother sleeps a lot when she's pregnant."
"You know Dad, there's certain activities that I have to involve in for something like that to happen. Don't worry, I'm not involved in those activities."
Never a normal day, I suppose.
So, it ended up that less than five days after I was released from school for the summer, I returned to work in the kitchen--see the other side of the system--and wash dishes, tour prospective students, and try not to ask too many questions of the few remaining teachers on campus, all under the orders of Jim, the head chef. He's forty-six or fifty-one, I never can tell, has a five year old son and a beautiful wife. He also has the funniest sense of humor, and it mostly revolves around giving you a funny expression and telling you that you didn't do something correctly.
But yes, I said campus. The school is an elitist boarding school that deals primarily with kids with issues, drugs, ADD, AD/HD... things I wasn't aware even existed before I ended up at this school after being rejected from an even more prestigious and elitist school. Mind you, I'm a day student, and day students don't suffer from the snooty, uppish and 'distinguished' attitude that so many boarding students suffer.
At any rate, it's summer, so all of these kids aren't around right now. Instead we have summer groups coming through, staying in the dormitories and enjoying the school's beautiful campus. Yesterday I met this group of kids, about eight to ten years old, and they were the most frank adorable kids. There is a window through which people stack their dishes, and I am on the other side of the window washing them. One kid comes up to the window and hands me his plate and silverware and then stands very still, watching me. I've done a lot of baby-sitting, I know how eight to ten year olds can behave, and standing this deathly still is not one of their usual activities. I came back over to the window and asked him, "Excuse me, is there anything wrong?"
No response.
I waited for a moment, then returned to my work, because there were a lot of dishes and I didn't want to be caught standing around without doing work. Finally, the boy shrugged his hoodie off of his head to reveal a shock of red hair and fixed me with his vivid blue eyes and said, "I vomited last night."
Excuse me? So I said what any self-righteous person would say when caught off guard and said,
"What?"
"I vomited last night."
"I'm sorry, I hope you're feeling better this morning."
"My shoes are untied."
"Do you want me to tie them for you?" I asked, unsure how to respond.
"No, that's okay. I can tie them."
The boy nodded somberly and stood there for a few more moments before wandering off to wreak havoc his friends, I'm sure of it.
I was finally catching up on the dishes when one of the counselors leans his head in my window and says, "We're all from Indiana, and I just wanted to tell you that I think it's amazing that Lake Michigan comes this far north. I had no idea the lake was so big, and thanks for doing the dishes for us."
Yes, Lake Michigan extends all the way to northern Michigan. It's called a great lake, the third largest freshwater body in the world, outstripped only by haughty Lake Superior and little-mentioned Lake Baikal. I nodded and smiled, then shook my head curiously, wondering how many people really were that ignorant. I then had to closely curb myself, because those snooty tendencies are what get people into trouble, so I returned to scrubbing the bacon pan.
Shortly after this incident, a girl comes up to me, unconsciously pushing long brown hair out of her freckled face and hands me a fork. Instead of setting the fork down or letting me take it from her when I reached out to handle it, she held on to the fork and met my eyes with an intensity that can only be summoned by kids of that age. "Take good care of Jimmy." Her tenuous command had me puzzled for a moment, but then she followed it up with, "And do not put him in that machine. It's scary. Wash Jimmy by hand." She then watched as I followed her command, amused with my situation.
This same girl came back with a mug and informed me that Susie was not afraid of the dishwasher and that the mug greatly enjoyed it's hot chocolate. I smiled and asked the girl's name, but she was already moving off to rejoin her friends.
Seven and a half hours later, I was released from the kitchen with the assurance that next week Jim'll be back and you won't be cooped up in the corner quite so much. I left the room and was quickly caught by the admissions officer Megan, a western gun-shooting girl with a quiet demeanor who is well suited to the title 'officer' because of how people pay attention to her. She can quiet the entire cafeteria by saying, almost in an undertone, "Excuse me." She's also rather didactic, which is useful in dealing with some of the people who come through her office.
At any rate, Megan snatched me--practically mid-step--and asked me to tour a girl through the school. I agreed, glanced at the clock and hoped that my habitually late mother would be reliable today.
Megan introduced me to Abby politely, and shepherded us off in the direction of the dorms, the gym and the art building. I made light conversation, telling her what classes I thought were the best, how the typical schedule worked, and finally asked what she thought of the school.
"Oh... it's really nice... the only problem I see is that there are no boys."
"The school is made up of about two-thirds boys during the school year."
"No, no, no, that's not what I mean. I mean that they're separated at night."
Yes, they are. No more needs to be said about this girl, but she was very funny and a polite enough person.
My mom found me and told me that she'd been waiting for a half hour, I apologized, she said it was okay, and we got headed back towards home. On our way back, she decided to stop by Krystall's house. Krystall is Mom's best friend and also happens to be Ryan's mother, she's a heavy smoker with red hair and tired eyes, and she also is the sweetest most dedicated mother.
She has two sons, not only Ryan but Josh too. Josh comes in at sixteen years old and a bad case of AD/HD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder). It can make dealing with him difficult, especially when trying to get someone who is very hyper and easily distracted to concentrate.
We spent the rest of the day at Krystall's, and when we finally went home I'd been introduced to many new subjects, these including: monster truck rallys, dirtbike freestyle contests and cake decorating contests. My sister and I laughed about it all the way home.
The next morning I woke up early to get ready to go to work. I felt sore and dragging, but I managed to get myself ready and got to work because I thought that if I started moving some, the soreness would wear off. I was right, but unfortunately I started to feel sick right about the time that I was making a cheese plate. The smell of the cheese, the way the lights were, everything about the room made me hurt or nauseous, so I gave up and told Deb that I needed to leave early. She waved me out, telling me that if I made any of her kids get ill from handling her food, I'd get a beating. I gave her a half-hearted smile and left, wandering over the to main academic building to see if I could give someone a call for a ride home.
I eventually got a ride home because Krystall was willing to come get me, but we stopped at her house so she could grab something. I walked inside to wait for her and sat on a couch, and when she came back out of her room I was soundly asleep. She just shook her head and let me sleep.
A few hours later, I woke up to Ryan holding me against his chest and talking quietly to his mom. When he realized that I was awake, he gave me a quick kiss and said that he wasn't going to be there for long.
"That's okay. You going to your second job now?"
"Mmhm. I'm sorry that I can't stay here and take care of you."
I smiled wryly. "I don't need much taking care of. I've been asleep all day."
"Alright, then I'm sorry I can't stay here and hold you while you sleep."
"You're too sweet."
"It's true. Now be quiet and go back to sleep." He squeezed me tight and then I fell asleep in fairly short order.
The next time I awoke was to my mother, pounding at the door. She came in and looked around for me then barked, "Kate, we need to go now."
"Huh? Oh umm..." I rubbed my eyes as I sat up and tried not to swoon as a wave of nausea swept through my body at the sudden movement.
"Get up. We need to go now."
Okay. I got up and went, thanking Krystall for taking care of me.
Later, when talking to my father on the phone, my description involved a lot of "And then I fell asleep. And then I slept some more."
My father's response? "You know, that kinda scares the hell out of me, because your mother sleeps a lot when she's pregnant."
"You know Dad, there's certain activities that I have to involve in for something like that to happen. Don't worry, I'm not involved in those activities."
Never a normal day, I suppose.
