Tales From the Klutz Kingdom-It’s as Easy as Falling Off a…Horse?

Posted by: nerdse on: August 2, 2009

• In: Attitudes toward fat people | Exercise | Exercising when you're fat | Fitness
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I’ve already detailed the basics of my klutz-dom. If there was a gold medal for Klutz, they’d have to create a Platinum one for me. I can fall over anything, as I’ve said.

And I was not kidding when I said I fell over a horse.

It happened in a moment of questionable sanity in college. I needed one more PE credit. I decided that since the extra fee for the horseback riding PE course for college was low, I’d sign up and avoid stocky, short, mannish gym teachers in those abominable little “tennis skirt” female gym teacher uniform things that would look ugly on a supermodel (sort of like high fashion, only uglier, and yes, that’s possible). The ones that spent a lot of time bellowing up at me that I was doing it wrong, stupid, ugly, fat, or else looking like they weren’t sure if they should shoot me, themselves, or both of us. So, aiming for someone different bellowing at me (or at least in a different outfit), the least likely person on the planet to sit a horse, took riding lessons.

First problem: Left/right confusion. Give me a map, and a car, and I’ll find my way around anyplace – I’ve done it in 2 foreign countries, including one where they drive on the “wrong” side of the road. Ask me to tell left from right – sorry. Even trying to remember that I always put my watch on the left hand doesn’t always help. So there was this “stand on the left of the horse, put the left foot in the stirrup” part to get over. Then there was the “get over,” or most of the time, the “get on” part – I have a lot of ballast. Comes from being too clumsy to participate in sports without a major joint or dermal injury (or both), having a metabolism that makes the U.S. Postal Service look fast, and liking food. Not necessarily in that order. So, I had to use a mounting block to give gravity less “suckage” on my carcass. Humiliation warred with practicality. I fought to exercise my legs to get my butt onto the horse without using a mounting block.

Finally comes the Big Day: the day I was determined NOT to use a mounting block. I was going to get on that horse without one, come hades or high water. This was to be THE day I hoisted my butt onto the poor horse’s back without any aid, against all odds (like, oh, Gravity?). We went to our assigned horses.

And this was a new horse to me. Hadn’t seen this horse before at all. New.

And BIG.

The back was the same height as I am. I’m 5′ 8″ (and still way too short for my weight). So that’s TALL for the back of a horse, and that was before you got to the additional height of the saddle.

Oh, great, says I to myself. The Big Day I’m going to fight gravity and win, and they give me the Jolly Green Giant’s horse. Oh, well. Time to show these people I can do it no matter how big the horse is. I-am-getting-on-this-horse-without-a-mounting-block, I said to myself repeatedly. Sort of like the Little Engine That Could (or in my case, the huge engine that wasn’t at all sure about all of this but stupidly determined to try).

So, I start up on the left side of the horse. Yep, I checked – I was on the same side of the horse as everyone else in the lineup (which was, most times, the only way I could be sure). OK, grasp the reins with the left hand, take them to the saddle horn and grasp, the back of the saddle with the right hand (since that was logical, I didn’t have to think left/right on that one), put the left foot in the stirrup, get a really good view of my patella (which was nearly blocking my view), give a couple light test “bounces” to get the feel of the relationship of the stirrup to the ground and the horse’s back, one, two, three, UP!

And OVER!

Judo training kicks in. Let go of everything, curl up in ball, roll onto the floor, use momentum to get up, kiei during process (hey, you kiei – pronounced KEE eye, aka yell – whenever you do stuff in martial arts, OK? When you fall, it helps keep the wind from being knocked out of you, when you throw someone, they go further, when you block a punch, the block’s more solid, when you punch/chop/kick, you have more force behind it, when someone connects with you, you don’t get the wind knocked out of you and it doesn’t hurt as bad).

Now, where am I? Correct. On the wrong side of the horse. Who is looking at me, laughing. Don’t tell me horses can’t laugh. That one was positively in stitches! As was everyone else.

OK, we don’t have a short, squat female in an ugly tennis dress; what we have is a really skinny guy in a plaid shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and hat, and bolo tie with a hand tooled leather belt connected at an unbelievably small waist by a super large belt buckle (i.e., redneck ID card). And he’s bellowing at me. Having missed the spectacle of a fat girl with long braids sailing butt end over tincups over the top of the largest horse God ever created outside of a Clydesdale, executing a Judo breakfall and standing up in one move, all he’s thinking is probably, How in God’s name can this fat girl be so stupid that at nearly the end of the course, she starts out on the right side of the horse to mount? Which thought he then verbalizes, minus the “fat” part. He’s also a bit baffled about what was so all-fired funny that everyone’s laughing their tails off, including the horse, but he’s more focused on where I’m standing.

I tell him, “I started out on the correct side of the horse.” A new round of guffaws. He’s still also wondering why I’m laughing along with everyone else. He’s beginning to suspect he may have missed something big, that everyone but him has seen (which was true), and he’s starting to get ticked off because he feels foolish for missing whatever it was.

“Then what in Heaven’s name are you doing on THAT side of the horse?!!” Yes, that loud.

New round of guffaws as I say, “I fell over the horse.”

“Oh,” he says, then, “You WHAT???“

“I fell over the horse. I started out over there,” says I, pointing to the other side of the horse, “determined to get onto the horse without a mounting block. I guess I pushed up just a little too hard. I fell over the horse and ended up here.”

This, by the way, is part of what I call the “all or nothing syndrome” of athletic endeavor. This was not, by any means, my first “all or nothing” experience. The other involved that short, squat, mannish female gym teacher in the ugly tennis skirt uniform thing and a tennis class, which I’ll detail in another post.

Meanwhile, flies are buzzing around the guy’s mouth, competing to see which can enter first (or possibly deciding if a mass invasion might be feasible). Finally, before the fly committee comes to an entry decision, the gaping hole that was the riding instructor’s mouth snapped shut. He let fly with a terse, “Did-any-of-you-see-this-and-can-anyone-confirm-it-really-happened?!“

More laughter, nods, a lot of people who are holding their sides, unable to stand up, tears rolling down their faces. I was laughing almost as hard. It had to have been hysterically funny. Today, a video of that would be a viral YouTube video and it would have garnered some sort of cash prize from a funny video show.

Now, if this was the end, it would still be funny, but wait, there’s more! My bra straps were held on in front by plastic fittings. All of which snapped, leaving me with a sagging feeling up top. Obviously, since I have enough up top to balance the ballast at the bottom, leaving my undergarments in a state such as this was NOT on the agenda, especially not in 1972! But most people who fall off a horse are afraid to get back on, and the usual cure is to get them back on right away, before they freak out and never again attempt horseback riding. Since falling off a horse was as close to falling over a horse as my befuddled riding instructor could get, he insisted that I get on the horse right away. I told him I couldn’t, that I needed to use the restroom first. He reiterated that if I did not face my fears, I would be too afraid to ride ever again. I said, “I am not afraid of the horse, nor of riding, but I do have a problem which I need to address, please allow me to pass, I will be back in 5 minutes.” But he insisted on hemming me in to where I couldn’t move. No pleas from his female helpers, who believed me, would avail, and they could SEE what the problem was and were attempting to help. Finally, I muttered, just so he could hear it, “Both my bra straps broke. If we do any trotting today, my cheeks are going to be bruised if I don’t fix the bra.” He was horrified, but the women laughed as I said, “Sorry, you asked for it, you wouldn’t leave well enough alone, so I didn’t have much choice!” The ladies agreed. He moved. I went and fixed the errant undergarment and returned with my chest secured out of the way of my cheeks.

I wonder if he ever got over that mental image? And I wonder if the women with whom he worked ever let him live that down? I’m betting no on both counts.

I’m also wondering if he ever let a fat girl into one of his classes again. I’m betting not without administering a coordination test first!