Falling off the Pony, Getting Back On, Learning to Dismount

The prompt on this antepenultimate day of the Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge: Write a post about the first time you did something, how it was, what it was, what you learned from it.


The first time I fell off a pony was right before the end of term horsemanship test. There was something in the air--four ponies bolted with their cargo before we even got started, four ten-year-olds ended up on our butts somewhere in the mud. I was more excited than scared by the unprecedented speed, albeit a little shaky when I got straight back on the horse, having chased him down.


I'd heard you have to have fallen or been thrown at least eight times in order to be counted a true horse person, so I was quietly gleeful to have gotten started on the path. Yes, I was a little sore, and yes, I was more tentative going through faster paces, knowing now how I could lose control (partly craving that loss). Considering how important it was to my ten-through-fifteen-year-old self, what should I make of the fact that I can't even remember whether I fell off eight times in those years, as good as my memory is? I think I did get the baptismal eight, but it may have been just seven. 


The silliest fall was from a slipped saddle (clever pony trick, blow belly out while the saddle's being put on, let the air out once the kid's aboard and riding--you can see why they do this). I stayed astride, slipping further and further sideways with the listing saddle, appreciating the comedy of the moment even while the joke was on me; finally accepted the inevitable and unhitched, to land in the inevitable mud puddle.


Despite my desire to fall eight times, I had a strong instinct to stay on the horse too, even the wilder horses who bolted and galloped so fast, my body would protest the imposed momentum and beg to bail out from the onslaught of breeze coming to meet us. But was it an instinct to stay aboard, or was it just a love of speed? The second silliest fall, I stayed on a horse who looked very much like this one...

...for a long, erratic galloping stretch in which I'd lost all control. But when she ended up in some woods and slowed to a canter, I was scraped off her back by some low-hanging tree branches! At that point, having raced and run and run away so far from all the rest of the group, she simply stopped, and waited for me to clamber back up.


This semester has been a runaway horse. Am I going to be able to dismount gently, or will I be scraped off by jutting branches just as things finally start to calm down?

I'd love to hear some "first time I did" memories from anyone who cares to share!