brothers, it’s sometimes hard for me to get listened to.
My group was just supposed to walk their ponies in circles and Max had me work with them in the indoor ring while he worked on more advanced things with the older kids. Once they’d walked around the ring six or seven times, I could tell they were eager to get onto something else. I knew Max would kill me if I let them trot, but there are a lot of things you can do at a walk so I started them on it.
For one thing, there’s the jump position, also known as three-point position. It’s called that because the rider is supposedly only in contact with the horse at three points—the ball of each foot touches a stirrup and the hands touch the horse’s neck. It’s really sort of standing up just a little bit from the saddle and it’s a position you use a lot as part of other things—like posting, jumping, and sometimes cantering.
So, I got them all riding in three-point. When Max came into the ring and saw what I’d done, he was really pleased. The kids were thrilled at having learned somethingnew and exciting and he was delighted that they were all doing it so well. Naturally, being Max, he had a lot of ideas on how to improve it.
“Reuben, put your heels down. You, too, Jessica. And, Natalie, you’re too straight up. Lean forward a little bit. No, keep your back straight. Better. Yes! Mark, you should be looking straight ahead. Leslie, nice job. You’ve got it right!”
Then he turned to me. “You don’t need me here anymore, do you?”
And that was just about the biggest compliment Max has ever given me!
As soon as Max left us, I decided I should teach the kids a game. We started playing a sort of Simon Says—only of course, I called it “Stevie Says.” I couldn’t do any complicated things with them, but I did have them stop, reverse directions, pat their ponies, rise to three-point—things like that. They thought it was fun and it also reminded them that they’d really learned some things their very first day in the saddle.
I was having fun
and
I was standing up. I even forgot about how much my injury hurt, until I tried to perch on the fence. I must have made a terrible face and I know I made a noise because everybody turned to look at me.
It’s not easy explaining a bruised coccyx to a group of six-year-olds, but they were really nice and knew that it hurt me a lot. Leslie told me she knew a good doctor if I wanted one. She meant her father. Isn’t that
cute
?
By the end of the day, I was exhausted. But it was a good kind of tired. I felt as though I’d accomplished a lot and that’s a wonderful feeling. I walked home (no bike, of course) and as I went, every one of the kids passed me and waved.
“See you tomorrow!” they all called out.
I couldn’t wait for morning to come.
T HE FIRST THING I heard when I walked into the stable the next morning was Leslie saying, “Oh, Red!” and then giggling. That was even before I got to the ring. It seemed that Red O’Malley was teaching the group I’d thought of as “my” kids and it seemed that they’d already become “his” kids. I was about to offer to take over when Mrs. Reg called me into her office and explained that Red was too busy with the class to muck out the stalls today so she thought it would be a good idea for me to fill my idle hours with a pitchfork and a lot of manure.
I was on my third stall when Red and the kids arrived back in the stable.
“Oh, Red, that was so funny!” said Jessica.
“Yeah, you should have been there, Stevie!” said Natalie.
“Red’s a
wonderful
teacher!” Leslie said. I could swear she sighed while she said it, too.
Like I cared!
Red helped all of the kids untack the ponies. They did it one by one, traveling in a pack. All the while that this was going on, I was mucking out Nickel’s stall. That meant I was delivering loads of manure into a bucket, carrying it out to a pile, scraping the floor of the stall, lugging fresh straw
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