The Village Idiot: Too much horse talk is not good
There’s a sign in our town’s only Laundromat, “No Horse Blankets in the Washing Machines, Please.” Good advice at home, too, I would think. But there’s a difference between people who own horses and everyone else.
I was talking to a friend one day about a neighbor who owns a horse. “He talks about that horse all the time,” he said. “What it eats, what it does in the morning, how it follows him around, how it loves the rain.”
“What’s so unusual about that?” I asked.
“Do you know what his wife eats? Do you know what she does in the morning? Do you know if she likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain?” It took me quite some time to even dredge up the wife’s name. I don’t believe my horse-loving neighbor has ever mentioned her.
But we all knew the horse’s name.
And that’s the difference between people who own horses and horse people.
Horse people are not able to talk about anything but horses. You say “Hello” to a person who owns horses and they’ll say something like, “Hello, nice weather we’re having,” back to you. Say “Hello” to a horse person and they’ll say, “That reminds me of something Mr. Ed did this morning. He’s just like a human. Did I mention we spent $1200 on the vet yesterday? Whew, and to think we nearly wasted that money putting it in the kid’s college fund. We were going to get Muffy braces but I told her most boys like a good overbite.”
You could say to a horse person, “I went to the dentist this morning and he told me I was going to need four root canals done on the same day without anesthesia,” and they would say, “That reminds me, Mr. Ed needs to be brushed. Want to come watch? Did we tell you that he’s getting plastic surgery? He’s so sensitive about the way he looks. He thinks his nose is too big.”
“Is he easy to ride?” you might ask.
“Ride? Oh, that’s rich. No one rides Mr. Ed, he’s a show horse. He might get scratched or nicked. We just walk him around the ring a few times for the judges. Here, help me get him in the shower. He likes to take a nice, long hot shower before he gets his pedicure.” The shower is a walk-in arrangement with nine heads and heated to the perfect temperature. At night they put heat lamps on him so he won’t grow an ugly winter coat.
I know what you’re thinking, I’ve laid it on a little thick about horse people. Think so? Sue and I once visited a fanciful castle in Europe. We took a train to a tiny, quaint town, then walked toward the huge chateau about a half-mile away. The place was massive, a four-story stone pile, a slate roof with fairy tail turrets sitting in the middle of several square miles of wooded park. An impressive weekend home if there ever was one. We walked around it twice but couldn’t find the main entrance. Or any open entrance, just massive closed doors at the end of sweeping cobble stone ramps. And a remarkable lack of tourists. Finally we spotted a lone stroller and asked him how to get in.
“This isn’t the chateau,” he said, “These are the stables. The chateau is over that hill.” He shook his head and said, “How do you say in English? Ah, yes, horse people.”
(Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes A Village Idiot: A Memoir of Life After the City.” He also contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at [email protected].)