Q: What does a horse-crazy girl grow up to be?
A: A horse-crazy woman. Duh.
Unlike some afflictions, an extreme interest in horses isn’t curable. In fact, it’s actually contagious, and girls that care more about horses than boys usually hang out together during recess and discuss their favorite mane and tail colors. When those little girls grow up, they carry in their hearts a childhood filled with horses, hay, boots and hooves, even though they may work as nurses, teachers, or sales clerks.
Here are a few things that every horse-crazy girl knows, whatever her current age or occupation.
1)The embarrassment of sitting in class and hearing someone behind you whisper, “Is that hay in her hair?”
2) The smell of a horse’s mane (which smells differently than the hair that covers a horse’s body) reminds you of being twelve years old and and telling your best friend which boy you like, which part you really, really want to get in the school play, and how you desperately hope that Smoky the cow horse finds his way back to his favorite cowboy before the end of the book.
3) When throwing hay while wearing a hoodie with a pocket in front, you must strategically hold your elbow over the pocket to keep it closed. If you neglect to do this, you will get hay in your pocket. And removing pieces of alfalfa and grass hay stems from the inside of a sweatshirt pocket is nearly impossible. Like, it would be easier to jump your horse over the moon while eating a bowl of rocky road ice cream and talking on the phone, than remove each and every little teeny tiny piece of hay.
4) There is a difference between school clothes and barn clothes. Just in case you ever forgot this distinction, your mom would remind you while she sprayed an entire bottle of Shout during a well intended, but futile effort to remove the manure stain on your brand-new five-button, high-waisted Levi jeans.
Those same moms who desperately try to clean loads of horsey laundry might be responsible for passing their love of horses on to their little girls, though.
5) If you take the scrunchy out of your ponytail and put it around your wrist when you turn on the hose to the water trough, you’re more likely to remember that you have water running and turn it off before you leave for a school dance. Today’s slim elastic hair bands just don’t serve the same purpose.
6) Laying backwards on a gentle, grazing horse with your elbows propped up on his rump and reading a book is a spectacular way to spend a sunny afternoon.
7) When you’re too young to have a driver’s license, your closest friends will become those who live within after-
school trotting distance.
8) Falling off a horse together while riding double and showing off for cute boys is the glue that bonds friendships for life.
9) If you have to do horse chores, you might as well throw hay with some flair.
Anyone can walk up to an old mineral tub and drop the hay in like a clod. But a horse-crazy little girl will add some style while helping her daddy do barn chores in the late afternoon.
10) No matter where life takes you as an adult, you will always be “horsey.” Little horse-crazy girls grow up to be horse-crazy women who prefer horses on their tank tops, fleece blankets, coffee cups and standing in their barns, if all goes according to plan.
By: Jolyn Young
Picture By: Laree Weaver Photography, Natalia Estrada, Lindsay Syme Photography and King Photography
This article originally posted on cavvysavvy.com