10/15/2025
"I am staring down at a white sheet of paper. Neat rows of numbers swim before my eyes, out of focus through tears—or through anxiety. My face is hot. I feel like I’m going to vomit.
“Your time is almost up,” my sharp-voiced teacher says.
I have maybe a third of the test done. It’s not that I don’t know how, or that I don’t want to finish. I just need more time, I plead internally.
I can’t simply regurgitate the answers onto the page like my classmates seem to be able to do. They’re like tiny human fax machines receiving dispatches from someone I can’t get ahold of.
My teacher pulls the paper from my desk with a raised eyebrow. I know what comes next.
Something written in red pen that I won’t be able to look at directly. A conversation about how I just need to “try harder” and “apply myself.” The continuous chorus of, “What aren’t you getting?”
My test hasn’t even been corrected yet, but I am already simultaneously enraged and embarrassed. What if I can’t get the red-marked test into my backpack fast enough? What if someone sees it? Why can’t I do this? I just want to leave.
Waiting at home is a black pony with a penchant for making children cry.
“He ran off with one of the other kids again,” my mom shouts as I lead him to the mounting block. He turns to bite me, but a “quit it” is enough to stop him. I stay sharp, though. I once saw him rip the pocket off of a working student’s jeans, and I have no desire to end up with a hole in my pants—or another bruised finger or forearm, for that matter.
I put my foot in the stirrup and swing my leg over. There is no math test now, only a pony underneath me who is too smart for his own good. I am too big for him, already, but he tolerates me, and I know most of his tricks. A few minutes later, I ask him for a lead change, but miss it.
“You know you need to ask him correctly, or he won’t do it,” my mother calls from across the ring. I do know this. I’ve heard her say it a thousand times to children and adults, alike.
“If you’re not getting the results you want, you’re probably asking for it wrong.”
The afternoon is quiet, and I try asking for the lead change again.
Soon, the black pony will become a palomino pony, bought too young and too green for the rider he was originally intended for. There will be a paint mare, who had had no qualms about bucking me off when she felt overwhelmed. Not long after that, two, dark bay, thoroughbred geldings will arrive. One of them is large with kind eyes and the nervous tic of flapping his bottom lip.
The other, well. No one else wants to get on him the day he comes. He is three-and-a-half, and I am not quite 13 at the time. “Could someone else get on him?” I heard a woman ask, followed by my name being bellowed from the indoor.
That horse looked vaguely giraffe-like, with long legs, and an even longer neck. He was holding his head a bit too high in the chilly winter air for my liking.
I put my foot in the stirrup and, once again, the world is quiet. There is no book report due, no 8th grade dance I worry about being asked to. There is only 17 hands of young, nervous horse underneath me.
I swear I can feel his muscles twitch under the saddle as we trot by the back door. It tends to rattle on windy, winter evenings like this. But the horse settles into a big, floaty trot that feels like his feet aren’t touching the ground. “I think he likes you,” a little girl in the ring giggles.
I would like to think he does like me,, but there will be days, later on, when I won’t be sure.
One of them was hot and ended with red sand caked into the creases of my skin, grit in my teeth. I spat out the dirt into the ring footing and got back on. I know there is a good chance I will be handed a towel and told to take my boots and pants off outside the house later when I get home.
We had jumped this wall before, why was it a problem now? We could easily jump much higher than this. What wasn’t he getting?
I decide to give him a different approach. I make the turn wider and when he dives left, this time, I am ready for it, and am unshaken. We finally make it over. Later, I give myself permission to cry.
We make quite the pair: the kid who always feels at odds with the world, and the horse no one else wants to ride. Years later, I will look at the milky, blind eye on this horse’s left side, and I will know what he ‘wasn’t getting.’ And there will be other horses.
Usually, somewhere on the spectrum of problematic, unwanted, or unbroke. I almost never turn them down; I quite literally can’t afford to. Although even with all the wealth in the world, I would probably still take in the raced and rejected. I feel I have a strange sort of kinship with them.
The world is a harsh and scary place, and these animals seem to know it. Horses are unaware of our ambitions. To me, working with them feels like a reprieve from an ever-competitive world. They give me a chance to feel capable, brave, and strong. When you’re trying not to get bucked off, run away with, or to soothe jangled nerves, the world becomes quiet. Time stops. Every twitch of an ear and flick of a tail means something.
A keen eye must be watchful of children hiding under tarps, leaves blowing in the wind, Jack Russells chasing cats into the ring, or other perceived threats. There is no room in your mind for your math test, or college applications, or filing your taxes. Work emails and social drama fade into the background. There is only room for a quiet voice that sounds like my mother.
“Sit up, steady hands, look where you want to go,” it says. “If he’s not getting it, you are asking him the wrong way.”
📎 Save & share this article by Jaclyn Loprete at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2024/10/29/asking-the-wrong-way/
