I’m bad at riding horses

My sister and I had two big things in common growing up: having hairy arms and not having any “talents”. I used to tell people that I wasn’t good at anything and people would respond by saying, “I’m sure that’s not true, you must be good at something.” It was seriously true. Or they would respond by saying, “You’re good at bowling though!” My response to that: I’m better than average at bowling because I have spent so many years practicing, but I’m not good at bowling in the bowling world (for bowlers out there, at my BEST I could average at 160, which you know is pretty mediocre). I will never be good enough to bowl competitively- it took me YEARS to accomplish what some people can accomplish in a couple months.

I was simply blessed with the gift of no coordination. (I always have a bruise on my hip because I judge my distance to wall corners wrong all the time and wind up hitting my hip on a wall as I turn the corner).

Now my sister, although also “talent-less” (I’m not including learnable skills here like writing and photography when I’m talking about talents, I’m talking about natural talents like singing or athletic ability, musical or artistic talent) has always had a bit more coordination than me. I don’t think she was ever the kid in P.E. class who couldn’t even hit a woofle ball. But we both learned to move on and accept our lack of talents, mostly by avoiding activities that showcases our lack of abilities.

I didn’t realize when I signed up for horseback riding classes that I would once again be showcasing my lack of coordination and any kind of ability. I’m pretty sure my teacher thinks I’m stupid. She gives directions by talking about inside/outside leg and that means nothing to me. I have to guess which one she means and then I get reprimanded for not knowing the difference. My definition of outside/inside in different from everyone else’s apparently, so I have to constantly tell myself it’s the opposite of what I’m thinking and then I just get confused.

On top of that, I can never remember how to put the bridle and saddle on the horse. My teacher said to me, “this is your second quarter and you STILL don’t know how to do this?” That’s right. You want to know why I don’t know how to put the bridle on? (other than the fact the every part of it looks the same to me and I don’t know which direction anything goes) Almost every time I have set up my horse, I go to get my helmet before putting the bridle on, and when I come back the horse is all ready to go. It’s magic. So I don’t get much practice at it which is bad because I don’t catch on as fast as others apparently.

I’m only taking the class so I can get some experience being around horses since I want to go to vet school. I’ve never been around horses in my life.

Growing up my mom told me that if I ever rode a horse I would wind up like Christopher Reeve.