Narration
Whoa!
I won a goldfish in the fair when I was five and brought it to my
castle triumphantly. Mom and dad were skeptical, but I persisted and thus a
long line of goldfish pets proceeded in my future years. At some point,
however, I grew disinterested in my swimming friends. Soon my parents were
forcing me to clean the fish bowl instead of me willingly attacking it with a
sponge. Eventually the fishes simply died off, and I never replaced them. This
gave my parents little faith in my skills of animal care taking and when five
year old me asked for a pony my request was quickly denied. I would not give
in. It was my destiny to be a rider.
The crusade to win a steed was short lived. I achieved my
goal through tenacious subtle hints such as paying for my own horse back riding
lessons to silently making “clip-clop” noises around the house. In seventh
grade my mother consented to the beginnings of a search for a horse. The first
horse that I could find for a reasonable price was a bay mare that hadn’t been
ridden for a year. Her name was Winter, and I quickly signed the papers to
bring her home.
Winter, the living being that I was now monetarily and
physically responsible for, was no goldfish. The stable I boarded at
allowed me to pay less if I scooped out the manure from her paddock instead of
letting a hand do it, and considering the budget of a thirteen year old I went
to work with a wheelbarrow everyday. This took much more time than simply
emptying out the water from a fish tank once a week and I occasionally resented
her for the heavy wheel-barrows I was forced to push. There
was also the matter of exercise. She bucked me off everyday within the first
month of riding her. During the first winter that we had the horses in Alaska
the wind blew to a chilly negative twenty degrees, and I donned an extra jacket
or four to give Winter the exercise she needed through the foot deep snow. My
fingers were so cold that I would often ride bareback so that I could burrow my
hands in her warm fur as I rode.
One day I finished a considerably long school day and was
exhausted. I went home and promptly fell asleep only to be awoken by my mother
at around midnight with a basket of towels in one hand and a hair dryer in the
other. “Al, you have to go dry off your horse before she gets pneumonia “ I
rolled over and buried myself further into my blankets. My mother
pointedly left the light on in my room and I eventually stumbled out bleary
eyed and grabbed a flashlight. When I reached the barn I saw Winter, standing
under her shelter, calmly munching hay as her sides quivered from the cold. The
extension cord nearby looked like a snake ready to bite my hand as I snapped
the hair dryer into the plug and overturned a bucket to serve as a stool.
Little streams, which were not there in the morning, ran past the shelter that
Winter and I were under. As I removed the moisture from Winter’s fur I could envision
tiny fishes swimming down the streams, escaping towards the ocean. Once her
hair was fluffy, and she seized to shiver, I gave Winter an apple and headed
back to bed, only to wake up in four hours to go riding.
My parent’s although doubtful at first, began to take notice of
how truly passionate I was about everything to deal with horses. Instead of
books, clothes, and shopping cash my Christmas and Birthday presents soon
became saddles, bridles, and hay money. I was much happier to muck out a
paddock then clean the slime out of a fish bowl, and eventually the rigorous days
that it took me to pay for, clean up after, and exercise my horse became
routine. That heavy wheel-barrow was as portable as the gold fish I brought
home all those years ago.
Conclusion is much better!
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