JR and I were practicing our gait last Sunday. I like to call it purity of gait practice. We rode by ourselves at James A Reed Park. The park has a lot of trails and they are flat and grassy. It’s just great for consistency.
We were zipping up the side of a paved road going to the trail head on the other side of the road.
Out in the parking lot FLASHES a 7-8 year old girl RUNNING with a KITE! The KITE is low to the ground and is dipping and flipping.
My heart commenced to dip and flip.
Just think how I felt being there alive and convinced that any second something unpleasant was going to occur…like sitting on a volcano about to erupt. Think how you would feel if the same thing happened. Yup, you would feel a certainty that you were going to die.
FORTUNATELY, we were still far enough away that the KITE wasn’t a scary object to JR. Guess how GRATEFUL I was for that!
The little girl kept running around in the parking lot with the flippin’ an dippin’kite. Instead of dying on the spot, I was now thinking that I was either going to have to stay in that spot for the rest of my life or turn around and go back the way I came when…
THE LITTLE GIRL FELL DOWN IN THE GRAVEL. She dropped the KITE! This made me VERY HAPPY. When she started screaming in pain, I tried to feel sorry for her, but couldn’t. After all, she tried to kill me.
JR and I went on up to the gravel parking lot. As we were passing by the parking lot, the brother asked the little girl what was wrong with the kite. The little girl (between screaming) told him it was broken. He started to dart after the kite and I YELLED, “PLEASE DON”T TOUCH THE KITE! The horse will be scared of it and KILL ME!”
The entire family looked at me with a stunned expression on their face… the little girl even quit crying. They must have thought I was insane, or from Mars, Or they were marveling at how JR and I looked pretty kewl, maybe they were admiring the fact that JR and my hair matches. Either way, I lived and I passed by them into SAFETY!
I felt bad about saying that about JR, but the potential for JR to face the fearful thing and run backwards from the kite over the dam dropoff or into the lake was a real possibility.
GASP, I might have had to make an emergency dismount and end up in the emergency room!
I’m thinking that all kites in WalMart should be destroyed and there should be a KITE search of every car that goes into James A Reed park!